Can't Look Away: How Our Technology Keeps Us Hooked - Beaker Street Festival 2026

Want to work for a tech company? You already do.

Most Australians spend hours each day staring at their smartphones - generating attention, data, and profit for some of the richest companies on earth. These tech companies would like us to believe we've got all the tools we need to cut back. (Just check your Digital Wellbeing app!) But behind the scenes, those same companies are investing enormous resources into making sure we don't look away. They've used insights from the gambling industry, human psychology, and neuroscience to make their products very, very hard to put down.

Maybe it's time for a second act in our relationship with technology. Indeed, many of us are looking to break free, but it's hard to push back against systems designed to outsmart us, especially when we don't fully understand what we're up against. In this session, a lineup of experts will explain exactly how these manipulative technologies work, how they learn about our tastes and our habits to feed their algorithms, and the sneaky tricks that pull us back just when we were about to look away.

This event is part of Beaker Street Festival 2026