Professor of Political Science • California Lutheran University
Investigating how algorithms and computational infrastructure restructure democracy, social contracts, and political power. Author of "You Must Become an Algorithmic Problem" (Bristol University Press, 2025) and forthcoming "Machine Liberalism" (Intellect / Univ. of Chicago Press, 2027).
Algorithmic Power and Democratic Expectations
Intellect Books / University of Chicago Press
Investigating how pervasive AI systems, predictive analytics, and platform monopolies are fundamentally redefining liberal democratic expectations of citizenship, the state, and procedural justice.
The Social Contract of Computational Systems
Bristol University Press
Interrogating the implicit covenants citizens make with algorithmic systems. Explores how optimization logic suppresses human contingency, and argues for civic agency through intentional friction.
The Architecture of Disclosure and the Threat to Public Life
Routledge (Politics and Technology Series)
A seminal critique examining how Web 2.0 social architectures privatize public discourse, encourage performative consensus, and enclose democratic deliberation in algorithmic filter channels.
An interdisciplinary research laboratory at California Lutheran University investigating the structural costs of artificial intelligence while engineering living civic intelligence pipelines. Fellows use agentic coding and critical STS frameworks to evaluate algorithmic systems in the wild.
Spatial auditing of automated license plate reader (ALPR) camera networks across Southern California, analyzing how private surveillance grids generate automated suspicion in marginalized communities.
Analyzing grassroots civic resistance against hyperscale computing facilities, documenting municipal moratoriums, water scarcity impacts, and California's landmark 2026 data center regulatory reforms.
Examining participatory virtual city replicas (Bologna, Barcelona, Helsinki) that combine qualitative citizen lived experience with spatial data to co-design climate resilience and transit equity.
Deconstructing 51–60% merchant fee take-rates, pay-to-play search placement tolls, and state-level antitrust counter-offensives (including California's COMPETE Act and multi-state litigation).
Converting City Council transcripts, voting records, and general plan amendments into an interactive, citizen-navigable knowledge graph for local democratic accountability.
Dynamic platform applying 20 multidisciplinary social science models (Polis, Rhizome, Assemblage) to resolve wicked research dilemmas in real time.
→Curated diagnostic vault offering prompts and structured frameworks to help researchers unpack systemic policy traps and cognitive biases.
→Living course syllabus examining California's housing deficit, CEQA vetocracy, direct democracy initiatives, and the Abundance Agenda.
→Interactive exploratory dashboard evaluating progress toward the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and climate thresholds.
→Professor of Political Science
California Lutheran University (2004–Present)
Chair, Department of Political Science • Convener, Technology and Society Working Group • Thousand Oaks, California.
Ph.D. in Political Science
University of California, Santa Barbara (2003)
B.A. in Political Science, University of California, Los Angeles (1995).
Critical STS • Algorithmic Governance
Platform Capitalism • California Politics
Regular consultant on municipal participatory governance, digital surveillance oversight, and state technology legislation.