Regulating the new

Abstract

Every new technology arrives in a box plastered with promises. New. Improved. Solves all your problems. Lifesaver. But does it actually deliver on these, or do we have to handle it with care? What does handling with care mean? This is a book about that job. It follows a regulator through the stages of guiding sociotechnical change: working out why a technology matters, framing the problem, weighing the ethics, finding where existing law runs out, justifying intervention, and reaching for instruments beyond law alone. A simple model runs through the whole thing and ties the stages together, so the field's scattered literature stops feeling like a reading list and starts feeling like a set of tools you can pick up. Written for LL.M students who found the foundational papers heavy going, but useful to anyone — legislators and regulators included — who has ever had to decide what to do about the next box by the roadside. The book is deliberately multidisciplinary — more than internet law, less detached than the handbooks — and unapologetically personal by a scholar who has been in the field of technology for more than 3 decades.