Law and Technology: Interactions and Relationships

The relations between law and technology are both simple and exceedingly complex. At the most elementary level, technology consists in the application of labor to create a product, to generate a service or otherwise to produce a desired result. Technology develops as ways are found to produce new results or to produce old results using fewer or less costly inputs. Law is generally understood to exist as a set of rules adopted by a society’s governing institutions that are applicable to all of its inhabitants.1 All modern societies have established