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DissertationDOI

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.
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, a judge in some representative American jurisdiction is assumed to accept the main uncontroversial constitutive and regulative rules of the law in his jurisdiction and to follow earlier decisions of their court or higher courts whose rationale, as l
Abstract: 1.. HARD CASES 5. Legal Rights A. Legislation . . . We might therefore do well to consider how a philosophical judge might develop, in appropriate cases, theories of what legislative purpose and legal principles require. We shall find that he would construct these theories in the same manner as a philosophical referee would construct the character of a game. I have invented, for this purpose, a lawyer of superhuman skill, learning, patience and acumen, whom I shall call Hercules. I suppose that Hercules is a judge in some representative American jurisdiction. I assume that he accepts the main uncontroversial constitutive and regulative rules of the law in his jurisdiction. He accepts, that is, that statutes have the general power to create and extinguish legal rights, and that judges have the general duty to follow earlier decisions of their court or higher courts whose rationale, as l

2,050 citations

Journal ArticleDOI

369 citations

References
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Book
01 Jun 2009
TL;DR: Pottage as discussed by the authors presents an anthropological perspective on persons and property forms from the perspective of persons and things, and presents a set of anthropological models for persons and their inheritance.
Abstract: Notes on contributors 1. Introduction: the fabrication of persons and things Alain Pottage 2. Res Religiosae: on the categories of religion and commerce in Roman law Yan Thomas 3. Scientific objects and legal objectivity Bruno Latour 4. Legal fabrications and the case of 'cultural property' Tim Murphy 5. Ownership or office? A debate in Islamic Hanafite jurisprudence over the nature of the military 'fief', from the Mamluks to the Ottomans Martha Mundy 6. Gedik: a bundle of rights and obligations for Istanbul artisans and traders, 1750-1840 Engin Deniz Akarli 7. Losing (out on) intellectual resources Marilyn Strathern 8. Re-visualising attachment: an anthropological perspective on persons and property forms Susanne Kuchler 9. Our original inheritance Alain Pottage Bibliography Index.

103 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors argue from a subjectivist position that differences between scientific and lay responses to risk information are not necessarily generally attributable to ''misinterpretations' by nonscientific readers, and that the process through which lay publics interpret mass media accounts of risk is worthy of more study.
Abstract: Two clearly defined positions on the evaluation of technological risks have emerged in the scholarly literature in a variety of disciplines: a `rationalist' perspective and a `subjectivist' perspective. This paper argues from a subjectivist position that differences between scientific and lay responses to risk information (as presented in media accounts) are not necessarily generally attributable to `misinterpretations' by nonscientific readers, and that the process through which lay publics interpret mass media accounts of risk is worthy of more study. Data are presented from twenty focus group discussions, involving 114 student respondents, of a range of print media articles about risky technologies. The results suggest that lay publics work with an `expanded vocabulary of risk' that takes into account a variety of issues having to do with information, implementation, regulation, and ethical considerations, as well as the cost and benefit factors traditionally weighed by risk assessors. The scientific c...

102 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
Richard Holliman1
TL;DR: A reception analysis showed that respondents were particularly influenced by coverage of Dolly the sheep, which considers how media coverage of cloning might influence the construction of scientific citizenship.
Abstract: This paper presents the results of empirical research that analyzed UK news media coverage of cloning. More specifically, it describes how quantitative and qualitative methods were used to examine the production, content and reception of newspaper and television news coverage of cloning. The paper documents the results of a systematic analysis of two years of media content (1996 and 1997), a period that includes the announcement that a Finn Dorset sheep (Dolly) had been cloned from a somatic cell. Interviews with media professionals and the Roslin Institute examined the processes of mediation involved in producing this coverage. A reception analysis, which investigated the significance of this coverage in informing respondents’ views about cloning, showed that these respondents were particularly influenced by coverage of Dolly the sheep. In conclusion, the paper considers how media coverage of cloning might influence the construction of scientific citizenship.

101 citations

Book
21 Dec 1994
TL;DR: Read by Starlight as discussed by the authors explores the characteristics in the writing, marketing, and reception of science fiction which distinguish it as a genre and explores the post-modern self-referentiality of the sci-fi narrative, its intricate coded language and discursive ''encyclopaedia''.
Abstract: Reading by Starlight explores the characteristics in the writing, marketing and reception of science fiction which distinguish it as a genre.Damien Broderick explores the postmodern self-referentiality of the sci-fi narrative, its intricate coded language and discursive `encyclopaedia'. He shows how, for perfect understanding, sci-fi readers must learn the codes of these imaginary worlds and vocabularies, all the time picking up references to texts by other writers.Reading by Starlight includes close readings of paradigmatic cyberpunk texts and writings by SF novelists and theorists including Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Brian Aldiss, Patrick Parrinder, Kim Stanley Robinson, John Varley, Roger Zelazny, William Gibson, Fredric Jameson and Samuel R. Delaney.

101 citations


"Technical Legality: Law, Technology..." refers background in this paper

  • ...These projections run in opposite directions, even though they can be detected in the most substantial corpus of such symptoms – contemporary science fiction.112 109 Broderick (1995), p 155....

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  • ...132 Broderick (1995), p 156....

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  • ...173 Broderick (1995), pp 8–11....

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  • ...On the absorption of Suvin’s estrangement as the critical framework for science fiction studies over the 1970s and 1980s, see Broderick (1995), pp 32–34....

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Journal ArticleDOI
01 Jan 1973
TL;DR: The United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space adopted and decided to submit to the General Assembly for consideration and final adoption a draft Convention on International Liability for Damage caused by Space Objects as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: On September 10, 1971, the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space adopted and decided to submit to the General Assembly for consideration and final adoption a draft Convention on International Liability for Damage caused by Space Objects. Approval of the Convention was recommended by the First Committee of the General Assembly on November 11, 1971; and on November 29, 1971 it was endorsed by the General Assembly. The Convention on International Liability for Damage Caused by Space Objects marks the culmination of a decade of debate and negotiation of the problem of liability for damage arising from outer space activities.

100 citations