Introduction

This book is an introduction to law (and, more broadly, regulation) and the technologies of the twenty-first century. At present, the particular technologies that attract our interest are information and communication technologies, biotechnologies (whether applied to humans or to plants and animals), nanotechnologies and neurotechnologies. However, science and technology is a rapidly shifting scene and it is perfectly possible that, as the decades pass, our interest will be engaged by other technologies that emerge. Similarly, although these technologies are presently on the radar in a number of legal areas – for example, biotechnologies are of interest to property lawyers, to environmental lawyers, to medical lawyers, to torts lawyers, to patent lawyers, to international trade lawyers, to human rights lawyers, to data protection lawyers, and so on – the pattern is constantly changing.

Any introduction must start somewhere, but where should we start our introduction to law, regulation and technology? To the extent that this is a novel field for legal inquiry, there is no settled point of entry. Helpfully, Bert-Jaap Koops has highlighted ten dimensions of what he calls ‘technology regulation research’, these dimensions mapping on to the three focal regions of technology, regulation and research. In the region of technology, we need to think about the different types of technology (for example, whether or not they build on the life sciences); the extent to which a technology is innovative; the place in which we find the technology (including whether it is in cyberspace); and how mature a particular technology is relative to the temporal development cycle (the dimension of time).