Runaway Technology
Can Law Keep Up?

Law can keep up with rapid technological change by reflecting our evolving understanding of how humans use language to cooperate.

Joshua A. T. Fairfield (Author)

9781108426121, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 25 February 2021

306 pages
23.5 x 15.7 x 2.2 cm, 0.57 kg

'This book will appeal to readers who want a deeper understanding of how language, and the language of law, can be cooperatively used to effect social and legal change.' Sally Sax, Canadian Law Library Review

In an era of corporate surveillance, artificial intelligence, deep fakes, genetic modification, automation, and more, law often seems to take a back seat to rampant technological change. To listen to Silicon Valley barons, there's nothing any of us can do about it. In this riveting work, Joshua A. T. Fairfield calls their bluff. He provides a fresh look at law, at what it actually is, how it works, and how we can create the kind of laws that help humans thrive in the face of technological change. He shows that law can keep up with technology because law is a kind of technology - a social technology built by humans out of cooperative fictions like firms, nations, and money. However, to secure the benefits of changing technology for all of us, we need a new kind of law, one that reflects our evolving understanding of how humans use language to cooperate.

Part I. Keeping Up: Law as Social Technology: 1. Can law keep up?
2. Rates of change
3. Technology law
Part II. Running on Words: Law as Cooperative Fiction: 4. Language, the human superpower
5. What went wrong with science?
6. Law's fruitful fictions
7. Shifting how we think
Part III. Law and the Language we Need: 8. Why we fail
9. Jurisgenesis
10. TL
DR.

Subject Areas: Impact of science & technology on society [PDR], Science funding & policy [PDK], Intellectual property law [LNR], Jurisprudence & general issues [LA], Ethical issues: scientific & technological developments [JFMG]