Law in general, and information law in particular, is an instrument of power. It has traditionally carried the task of restraining and directing technology, especially in moments of rapid technological change. Today, however, institutionalised legal power increasingly competes with rapidly consolidating technological power – and neither is fully prepared for the consequences of ongoing disruption. This lecture explores the challenges facing information law in an era in which both the government of the self and the government of others have become, fundamentally, questions of technology governance.

Digital infrastructures

Technology governance has long aimed to reduce the risks and harms of innovation while ensuring that its benefits are widely shared. With the digital revolution, in which digital infrastructures have become tools for governing individual choices and entire populations – the risks and harms are no longer located in “the technology itself”, but in everything that technology touches.

Technology governance is therefore governance of complex socio-economic and socio-technical systems, and above all of human lives and shared worlds. This lecture examines what kinds of knowledge and what kinds of instruments this task requires, and asks how the legal profession can prepare for a future in which its own power is next in line to be disrupted.

Prof. dr. B. Bodó, Information Law and Policy, especially Technology Governance: The governance of technology, the government of others.

This inaugural lecture can be followed here.