Foresighting Futures: Law, New Technologies, and the Challenges of Regulating for Uncertainty (original) (raw)

Introduction: Looking into the future

2010

The contributions in this issue of the European Journal of Legal Studies tackle various developments which are currently shaping our future and raise important questions, varying from what technological advances mean for our understanding of "law", to how legal tools are devised in practice to deal with the challenges posed by new advances. The topic is introduced below by the members of the Infosoc Working Group of the Department of Law of the European University Institute, who organised the conference during which these contributions were first presented and were kind enough to honour the European Journal of Legal Studies by publishing them in this Special Conference Issue. On behalf of the Editorial Board of the Journal, I would like to thank the members of the working group for all the work, and Benjamin Farrand for further editorial assistance. We are pleased to offer our readers a this collection of thoughtprovoking essays.

Regulating the future? Law, ethics, and emerging technologies

Journal of Information, Communication and Ethics in Society, 2011

PurposeThe purpose of the paper is to provide an overview of the legal implications which may be relevant to the ethical aspects of emerging technologies, to explore the existing situation in the area of legal regulation at EU level, and to formulate recommendations for the lawmakers.Design/methodology/approachThe analysis is based on the premise that the law is supposed to invoke moral principles. Speculative findings are formulated on the basis of analyzing specific emerging technologies; empirical findings are based on a research conducted in the whole legal corpus of the EU.FindingsIn the area of network‐based technologies the already existing and elaborated legal frameworks can be used in an extended manner; artificial intelligence‐based technologies call for alterations in several branches of law; while interface technologies show the difficulty and complexity of regulating interdisciplinary fields. The legal implications of emerging technologies have attracted only a minimal ...

What Future? Which Technology? On the Problem of Describing Relevant Futures

Doing research on future and emerging technologies raises a number of significant ontological and epistemological challenges. The fundamental uncertainty of the future, combined with problems of appropriate descriptions of tech nology in general, render it difficult to come to an appropriate account of the likely shape and use of future technologies. This paper discusses several streams of research that address this issue, including the question of relevant description and context, interpretive flexibility, affordances of technology, and multi-stability of technological trajectories. The paper proposes that some of these problems may be addressed by using a democratic and participative approach to technology research and development. Participative technology assessment is then discussed as an example of an established way of democratically engaging with technology stakeholders during research and development. The paper concludes by discussing the promises and limitations of such a participative approach with regard to the question of understanding and researching future technologies.

New Technologies and the Law: Precedents via Metaphors

2010

In many ways it is futile to think about the future. There are far too many variables involved and it is almost impossible to make accurate predictions. But, in the arena of information and communications technologies (ICT), the sheer pace of technological change forces us to confront it. We have to factor in the future when we make investment, regulatory, and other decisions about ICT. i The preferred device is a formal model which allows us to make predictions with a high degree of accuracy. Such a model requires a comprehensive understanding of the phenomenon and availability of accurate data. Unfortunately, the sheer complexity of the processes leading to the development of a large technical system such as the "information superhighway" does not readily lend itself to precise modelling. The processes tend to be ambiguous and ill-defined and accurate data are a rare commodity. In such situations metaphors and analogies offer a viable alternative to formal models. They help us handle situations where there is "high uncertainty, missing data, unclear goals, and poorly understood parameters". 1 We have to accept the fact that although the use of metaphors is not a particularly elegant or sophisticated technique, it is perhaps the only conceptual tool we have for understanding the development of a new technology. We should therefore direct our energies towards understanding the peculiarities of this tool: How can we leverage it to maximise the potential 6

ALVIN TOFFLER FUTURE SHOCK REVIEW: KNOWLEDGE, TECHNOLOGY AND CHANGE IN FUTURE SOCIETY

ALVIN TOFFLER FUTURE SHOCK REVIEW, 2019

In this article, attempt was made at analyzing the thoughts of Alvin Toffler.Toffler was a prominent futurist. In his book Future Shock, Toffler explicitly discussed the role of knowledge and technology in effecting changes and thus shaping the coming of the new type of society in the future. The theory of future society has fascinated many scholars and over the past quarter of a century there have been persistent claims that societies have entered a new era of their history. While still being undoubtedly industrial, they have undergone, it is suggested that, such rapid changes can no longer be considered under the old names and by means of the old theories. Societies are now in various ways 'post-industrial': ' 'post-modern,' even 'post-historical'.

The law of the future and the future of law : volume II

2011

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New Technology, Big Data and the Law

Perspectives in law, business and innovation, 2017

Over the last three decades, interconnected processes of globalization and rapid technological change-particularly, the emergence of networked technologieshave profoundly disrupted traditional models of business organization. This economic transformation has created multiple new opportunities for the emergence of alternate business forms, and disruptive innovation has become one of the major driving forces in the contemporary economy. Moreover, in the context of globalization, the innovation space increasingly takes on a global character. The main stakeholders-innovators, entrepreneurs and investors-now have an unprecedented degree of mobility in pursuing economic opportunities wherever they arise. As such, frictionless movement of goods, workers, services, and capital is becoming the "new normal". This new economic and social reality has created multiple regulatory challenges for policymakers as they struggle to come to terms with the rapid pace of these social and economic changes. Moreover, these challenges impact across multiple fields of both public and private law. Nevertheless, existing approaches within legal science often struggle to deal with innovation and its effects. Paralleling this shift in the economy, we can, therefore, see a similar process of disruption occurring within contemporary academia, as traditional approaches and disciplinary boundaries-both within and between disciplines-are being re-configured. Conventional notions of legal science are becoming increasingly obsolete or, at least, there is a need to develop alternative perspectives on the various regulatory challenges that are currently being created by the new innovation-driven global economy. The aim of this series is to provide a forum for the publication of cutting-edge research in the fields of innovation and the law from a Japanese and Asian perspective. The series will cut across the traditional sub-disciplines of legal studies but will be tied together by a focus on contemporary developments in an innovation-driven economy and will deepen our understanding of the various regulatory responses to these economic and social changes.