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Chapter 5 - Legal Regulation of Technology

Supporting Innovation, Managing Risk, and Respecting Values

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 November 2019

By
Roger Brownsword
Edited by
Todd L. Pittinsky
Todd L. Pittinsky
Affiliation:
Stony Brook University, State University of New York
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Summary

Legal and regulatory responses to emerging technologies vary from one technology to another, from one legal system to another, and from one time to another. Although under some legal systems, the response to a particular technology might be restrictive, under others it might be permissive; even facilitative. Sometimes the regulatory focus is a novel process; at other times, it is a novel product or a particular use or application. Some regulatory cultures tend to be precautionary, others tend to be proactionary, and others respond case by case, providing no simple pattern or stock response.

Different technologies, moreover, elicit different kinds and different degrees of concern. Fukuyama (2002) famously expressed deep moral concern about millennial developments in human biotechnology (that threatened to compromise human dignity), but much less concern about the possible threats to privacy and equality presented by information technology.

Type
Chapter
Information
Science, Technology, and Society
New Perspectives and Directions
 , pp. 109 - 137
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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