The 1709 Blog

Legal systems have been conspicuously slow in adapting to the needs of society and to the development of new technologies. When, even with delay, law reacts to societal changes, it usually has just a restricting function: it prohibits rather than enables certain types of activities. Thus, the law is a rather poor instrument in dealing with the cataclysmic changes brought by the very rapid developments in technology. These touch upon all aspects of social life, ranging from issues of employment and intellectual creation, or more generally the creation of resources, to new modes of data and AI-driven governance, affecting multiple environments, reaching from the streets and hospitals to the financial system and the battlefield. For the law to remain relevant, it will have to rapidly adapt to these challenges, so it can remain at the epicenter rather than the periphery of social and business activity. It is also important that technology entrepreneurs be cognizant of the crucial importance of the legal system and of the necessity of adaptive changes to it when designing their business models, since ignoring the role of the law may jeopardize their innovative efforts and disruptive innovations