Considering Technology and the Law

As I start this blog on my academic exploration of the intersection of technology and the law, I come first (and necessarily so) to the big question: what on Earth am I going to name it??

I toyed first with something simple: Technology and the Law, perhaps. Regretfully, someone is already using technologylaw.blogspot, and a title these digital days is so much better if it reduces into (or at least parallels) a web address. Figuring "Technocratic" was probably not in that many blog titles, I arrive here.

But the name is also fitting. Miriam-Webster defines "technocratic" as "of, relating to, or suggestive of a technocrat or a technocracy." A "technocracy" is further defined as "government by technicians; specifically: management of society by technical experts." Part of the goal of this blog is to make clear just how much our society is in fact shaped, guided, and in managed by "technical experts."

In that observation, however, I am not particularly referring to management by technical experts as government officials. I am referring to the individuals at Google and Microsoft, at Research and Motion (makers of Blackberry), and, in the years to come, I predict those at companies like iRobot. It is because of companies like these that we are already living in a digital, web-interfaced, technology-driven age.

As technology continues to shape our world, the laws that structure society will of course evolve. Courts, agency administrators, and legislators alike will necessary develop jurisprudence to address that technological revolution. And so we come to the title of this exploration, "Technocractic Jurisprudence," a title that mirrors the mission of this blog: to explore the path law concerning technology has taken and should take in the future.

But, most importantly of all, this title also reduces to a great (previously unoccupied) web address.