Technical Legality: Law, Technology and Science Fiction
01 Jan 2010-
TL;DR: In this article, the intersections of law and technology, referred to here as technical legality, are explored through taking science fiction seriously, and it is argued that reflection on technical legality reveals the mythic of modernity.
Abstract: This thesis concerns the intersections of law and technology, referred to here as
‘technical legality’. It argues that reflection on technical legality reveals the
mythic of modernity. The starting point for the argument is that the orthodox
framing of technology by law – the ‘law and technology enterprise’ – does not
comprehend its own speculative jurisdiction – that is, it fails to realise its oracle
orientation towards imagining the future. In this science fiction as the modern
West’s mythform, as the repository for projections of technological futures, is
recognised as both the law and technology enterprise’s wellspring and cipher.
What is offered in this thesis is a more thorough exploration of technical
legality through taking science fiction seriously. This seriousness results in two
implications for the understanding of technical legality. The first implication is
that the anxieties and fantasies that animate the calling forth of law by technology
become clearer. Science fiction operates as a window into the cultural milieu that
frames law-making moments. In locating law-making events – specifically the
making of the Prohibition of Human Cloning Act 2002 (Cth) and the Motor Car
Act 1909 (Vic) – with the clone ‘canon’ in science fiction (specifically Star Trek:
Nemesis (2002)) and H.G. Wells’ scientific romances, what is offered is a much
richer understanding of how the cultural framing of technology becomes law than
that provided by the ‘pragmatic’ positivism of the law and technology enterprise.
The second implication arises from the excess that appears at the margins
of the richer analyses. Exploring technical legality through science fiction does
not remain within the epistemological frame. Each of the analyses gestures
towards something essential about technical legality. The law and technology
enterprise is grounded on the modern myth, which is also the myth of modernity – Frankenstein. It tells a story of monstrous technology, vulnerable humanity and
saving law. The analyses of the Prohibition of Human Cloning Act 2002 (Cth) and
the Motor Car Act 1909 (Vic) show that this narrative is terrorised, that the saving
law turns out to be the monster in disguise; that the law called forth by technology
is in itself technological. In extended readings of two critically acclaimed science
fictions, Frank Herbert’s Dune cycle (1965–83) and the recent television series
Battlestar Galactica (2003–10), the essential commitments of technological law
are exposed. Dune as technical legality makes clear that technological law is truly
monstrous, for behind its positivism and sovereignty its essence is with the
alchemy of death and time. Battlestar Galactica as technical legality reduces
further the alchemical properties of technical law. Battlestar Galactica moves the
metaphysical highlight to the essence of technology and very nearly ends with
Heidegger’s demise of Being in ‘Enframing’: monstrous technology and
monstrous law reveal a humanity that cannot be saved. However, at the very
moment of this fall, Battlestar Galactica collapses the metaphysical frame,
affirming technological Being-in-the-world over empty ordering, life over death.
This free responsibility to becoming that emerges from Battlestar
Galactica reunites technical legality with the mythic of modernity. The modern
denial of myth, which allowed Frankenstein to narrate technical legality, has been
challenged. Free responsibility to becoming means a confidence with myths; it clears the way for the telling of new stories about law and technology.
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References
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TL;DR: The Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs report on human cloning may well fulfil the first half of its project, namely the empirical task of adequately summarizing and categorizing the various submissions made to the Committee, but it is clearly inadequate as a discussion of the ethical and legal permissibility of human reproductive cloning.
Abstract: There is nothing like an overwhelming consensus of opinion to encourage a less than rigourous approach to analyzing complex ethical issues. Unfortunately, this is nowhere more apparent than in the discussion of human reproductive cloning contained in the federal House of Representatives Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs’ report on human cloning, released last August The report may well fulfil the first half of its project, namely the empirical task of adequately summarizing and categorizing the various submissions made to the Committee. However, it is clearly inadequate as a discussion of the ethical and legal permissibility of human reproductive cloning.
3 citations
Posted Content•
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors bring together the law's story of corporate personhood with its science fictional counterpart: the story of the android, Lieutenant Commander Data, from "Star Trek: The Next Generation."
Abstract: This article brings together the law's story of corporate personhood with its science fictional counterpart: the story of the android, Lieutenant Commander Data, from "Star Trek: The Next Generation." Both the modern corporation and Data are cases of artifactual agency--actors created by artificial means. As such, their claims to personhood--that is, to being moral agents with the same rights and duties as their human counterparts--are problematic. But the story science fiction tells of Data's claim to personhood is markedly different from the story the law tells about the corporation. Data's story reveals the "silences" in the narrative of corporate law, replacing them with dialogue. In revealing such "silences," Data's story brings into view an alternative moral framework for the law's struggles with corporate personhood, a new "ending, which we can supply."
3 citations
Additional excerpts
...See Joseph and Carton (1992), pp 72–73; Short (2003); Nesteruk (1999)....
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Journal Article•
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TL;DR: The Flesh and Bone collection by Cydney Chadwick as discussed by the authors is a collection of thirty-five very short stories that do not afford the author the space to construct and maintain complex characterizations.
Abstract: Cydney Chadwick. Flesh and Bone. Penngrove, CA: Avec Books, 2001. 1 87 pp. $14 This is a collection of thirty-five very short stories that do not afford the author the space to construct and maintain complex characterizations. Chadwick writes the moment of crisis rather than the character in crisis. She presents emotion as a wild, confused reflex-"a genetic impulse"-that leads to unpredictable and misguided responses. Yet her prose remains cool and precise in its portrayal of aggression and violence. In "The Gift Horse's Mouth" a woman receives a gift from a former lover. After intense examination of the painting and its inscribed paper wrapping, the woman concludes that her ex-lover intends to murder her. She agrees to meet him in a restaurant where she "swiftly inflicts a small cut on the index finger of his right hand with a steak knife." This distance between the quality of the prose and the aggressive acts it reports achieves a productive tension. The language in these stories can be scientific in times of physical exertion: "The blue spots I see after blinking are a result of mild dehydration, but if I can get a bit more water from someone in the next group of spectators, I should be able to get off the course without cramping." Or it can be wry and ironic when describing melodramatic behavior: "That evening the woman's boyfriend calls and she can tell he's been drinking. He suggests they break up, but after talking non-stop for another fifteen minutes, says perhaps they should get married." Throughout the book Chadwick shows superior restraint and equanimity. Remaining economical and clinically forthright, the prose never becomes distressed by the frequently feral behavior of its subjects: Bored of this, they drag their shoes through the coarse sand. As dust flies they become increasingly frenetic, begin running haphazardly around the playground, their arms outstretched. Ugly bitch they shout and scream while trying to knock one another down in the dirt. Chadwick consistently works to present the events of her stories as fragments of shared behavior, rather than focusing on a particular character's neuroses. The characters are purposely ascribed generic qualities: a flabby neck, a generous bosom, a bicyclist's legs; the vague implications of "ugly" and "ugliness" are frequently employed. Settings are similarly indistinct. This allows the narrator to flence the flesh of a moment until a simple, unsightly almost animalistic motivation, is revealed. In "Irritants" a man is angered by a female tennis opponent who fires a ball into his gut: "The man's first impulse is to fire a ball back at her, but she's not ugly." In this world in which intense emotions appear and vanish in the course of a single sentence, Chadwick succeeds at pausing the action for brief meditations on time and memory. In "Flight," which employs the second-person for a disorienting effect, "you" routinely suck the draughts of marijuana smoke from a heating vent shared with a neighboring apartment, then walk the streets to browse the windows of antique shops. One day, this ritual happens earlier than usual and "you" take to the streets in an unexpected, incriminating afternoon light. An old photograph of a leaping ice skater echoes a memory. The narrator provides a quick but insightful explanation for the resulting sensation of timelessness and loneliness: "Today, that form you were once inside of, unable to imagine any other, has vanished, as has that boundary between yourself and the world." This revelation emerges out of a recognizable situation, but it works toward a wide-reaching rumination rather than a resolution of a particular life. On the other hand, this distancing from characters can lead to contempt on the narrator's part. Characters can be treated brusquely and rendered one-dimensional, as if held up for ridicule rather than reflection. In "Conceptions" a limpid couple marries to the detriment of both parties and two eventual children: "Say it is 1972 and you are a beauty queen from the suburbs with bleached-blonde hair. …
3 citations
Posted Content•
TL;DR: This article considers problems with past legislative definitions in Australia, the new regulatory regime, and whether that regime now sets clear boundaries, and three regulatory approaches are discussed.
Abstract: It is difficult to regulate rapidly changing fields of science. New technologies are not anticipated and legislation becomes inadequate. Legislative definitions are also problematic. This article begins with consideration of such difficulties in the context of research on human embryos and cloning. It considers problems with past legislative definitions in Australia, the new regulatory regime, and whether that regime now sets clear boundaries. It is found that problems still exist--some terms are not adequately defined and boundaries for research prove unclear. Three regulatory approaches are therefore discussed. Legislation based on strict definitions is compared to a legislative model that leaves terms undefined. The third model - which combines framework legislation with the oversight of a regulatory authority - is seen as most suitable. However, problems with this model are recognised and suggestions made regarding how to ensure the "framework" remains workable and effective.
3 citations