Can the Law manage Technological Change?

Photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash

One of the biggest myths in the digital age is that the law can’t keep up with technological change. The purveyors of this myth don’t seem to realize that when they make this claim they are making an unspoken assumption that every change in technology requires a change in the law. But this is not true.   The law does not intersect directly with technological power. Rather, as we plan to explain in subsequent posts in more detail, the law intersects with technology indirectly, at the technological boundary. Thus, only when the law is not synchronized with the technological boundary in an instance does it need to change.

How does the law get out of synch with a technological boundary, you might ask? Assuming the law is initially in synch with a technological boundary, the law would generally only get out of synch with it when that technological boundary expands or is eliminated. Conceivably, the technological boundary could contract but we hope and assume that is rare. And it is possible another form