{"id":412,"date":"2015-12-09T15:34:15","date_gmt":"2015-12-09T20:34:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stsnext20.org\/vignettes\/?p=412"},"modified":"2015-12-09T15:34:15","modified_gmt":"2015-12-09T20:34:15","slug":"where-were-going-we-still-need-roads-between-the-law-lag-and-the-tech-lag-narratives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stsnext20.org\/vignettes\/2015\/12\/09\/where-were-going-we-still-need-roads-between-the-law-lag-and-the-tech-lag-narratives\/","title":{"rendered":"Where We\u2019re Going, We Still Need Roads: Between the Law Lag and the Tech Lag Narratives"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Image<\/a>

Image Credit: Car by Becca O’Shea from the Noun Project. Rather than looking at the law lag and tech lag narratives as mutually opposed, STS invites us to explore what vision of society and emerging technology they represent, and what is at stake when they get mobilized.<\/p><\/div>\n

On October 21st<\/sup>, 2015 the future disappointed us. Fans of the Back to the Future<\/em> trilogy were counting down to that day<\/a> when Marty Mcfly and Doc Brown would take their time travel-enabled Delorean all the way from their 1985 present into the science fictional future. Just as the two protagonists were about to head to the future, Marty suggested they back up their time-travelling car, to have a bit more road to land on at their destination. Doc, having just come back from the future, responds with the classic line, \u201cRoads? Where we\u2019re going, we don\u2019t need roads.\u201d<\/p>\n

Looking out the window in 2015, there are no banana peel-operated flying cars, hoverboards, or auto-drying jackets anywhere in sight. Our most innovative cars are still struggling with road-bound fixed-gear bikes (1).\u00a0Comparing our near future to its cinematic counterpart, some commentators can\u2019t help feeling underwhelmed by the technology that surrounds us. This sense of a lost trajectory of technological innovation can be called the \u201ctech lag narrative.\u201d<\/p>\n

Peter Thiel, PayPal co-founder and leading Silicon Valley venture capitalist, expressed this sentiment in his Science and Democracy Lecture<\/a> at Harvard in March 2015. Referencing the cinematic trilogy, Thiel\u2019s talk was titled \u201cBack to the Future: Will we create enough new technology to sustain our society?\u201d Thiel argued that our technological visions are no longer ambitious enough. He sought to distinguish \u201ctrue technological innovation,\u201d which is transformative, from what the tech industry is currently doing, namely, \u201cmore of the same.\u201d Elsewhere, he has said, \u201cwe wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters\u201d (2).\u00a0Through a book<\/a>, lectures across university campuses, and his venture capital company\u2019s manifesto<\/a>, Thiel\u2019s tech lag narrative seems to be winning over hearts and minds and wallets. Over the past few years, new product launches and high-priced startups have met with criticism of their overvaluation, the specter of another impending Silicon Valley bubble, and the beginning of a backlash (3).\u00a0In late 2012, influential tech journalist Michael Arrington published a piece titled, \u201cI\u2019m Bored. What\u2019s Next?\u201d (4).\u00a0Together, these tech lag voices are converging around one message\u2014the future isn\u2019t what it used to be.<\/p>\n

These views of the state of technological innovation both echo and contrast with another common characterization of the relationship between technology and society\u2014the law lag. This is the notion that technoscientifc inventiveness is an \u201cagenda-setting force to which the law responds only by reaction\u201d (5).\u00a0\u00dcber offers a recent example of this narrative\u2019s popularity. Commentators say that attempts to regulate \u00dcber\u2019s operations illustrate the law lagging behind new fast-paced technologies (6).\u00a0So which is right? Are we not producing enough transformative technology? Or is the rate of technological innovation too rapid for our outdated social institutions?<\/p>\n

Rather than looking at the law lag and tech lag narratives as mutually opposed, STS invites us to explore what vision of society and emerging technology they represent, and what is at stake when they get mobilized. Reexamining the narratives in this light, we see how the tech lag and the law lag are in fact complementary.<\/p>\n

Examining the debates surrounding the governance of emerging biotechnology, Benjamin Hurlbut observes that the law lag narrative casts the law\u2019s role as reactive while science and technology follow their own proactive trajectory (7).\u00a0Echoing Jasanoff (8),\u00a0Hurlbut notes that through the law lag narrative, science and technology become the only sites from which innovation emerges, whether material or normative. Scientists and technologists thereby assume the authority (and responsibility) to characterize how society should progress (9).\u00a0Law then is reduced to the task of preventing harm to society, harm as defined by the expert community. The law lag, Hurlbut concludes, is a \u201cmechanism for delegating power\u201d to scientists and technologists (10).<\/p>\n

The tech lag narrative also assumes that novelty derives from technology. For example, in his recent book, Zero to One<\/em>, Thiel defines the word technology as a form of \u201cvertical or intensive progress\u201d which results from doing new things (11).\u00a0When mobilizing the tech lag narrative, its advocates still insist that innovation is primarily technological and made by scientists and technologists, while bemoaning the fact that it is not as visionary as it should be. As in the law lag narrative, experts in the form of technology entrepreneurs play the role of discerning real innovation. The startup is the privileged site where futures are constructed. Thiel\u2019s definition of an ideal startup is \u201cthe largest group of people you can convince of a plan to build a different future\u201d (12).<\/p>\n

Comparing the law lag and the tech lag narratives in this way makes their repeated and concurrent invocation less puzzling. Both narratives suggest a strikingly similar trajectory to the future. Both are mechanisms for delegating power and responsibility for the construction of such futures to experts. The lag narratives obfuscate the fact that claims about how science and technology generate innovation are simultaneously also claims about who should prescribe how society ought to progress. Much like a Marty McFly stuck in 1955, Thiel seems to want to get back to a specific<\/em> future: back when we were \u201con track\u201d towards his vision of a future of novelty defined by tech entrepreneurs. Perhaps it is not our limited imagination that frustrates flying-car enthusiasts, but rather our insistence not to cede to Thiel\u2019s entrepreneurs the tarmacked ground on which collective formulation of such visions should occur.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Keywords:<\/strong> law lag, tech lag, innovation, entrepreneurship<\/p>\n

References:<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Matt McFarland, \u201cHow Fixed-Gear Bikes Can Confuse Google\u2019s Self-Driving Cars<\/a>,\u201d The Washington Post<\/em>, August 26, 2015.<\/li>\n
  2. Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry, \u201cFacebook Investor Wants Flying Cars, Not 140 Characters<\/a>,\u201d Business Insider<\/em>, July 30, 2011.<\/li>\n
  3. See: Farhad Manjoo, \u201cIs Slack Really Worth $2.8 Billion? A Conversation With Stewart Butterfield<\/a>,\u201d Bits Blog<\/em>, April 16, 2015;\u00a0Francisco Dao, \u201cWhy Silicon Valley Innovation Has Stalled<\/a>,\u201d Pando<\/em>, January 3, 2013. Ross Andersen, \u201cTim Cook Sounds Desperate Talking About the Apple Watch<\/a>,\u201d The Atlantic<\/em>, September 9, 2015;\u00a0Leo Mirani, \u201cAre We Starting to Fall out of Love with Silicon Valley?<\/a>\u201d Quartz<\/em>, April 18, 2015.<\/li>\n
  4. Michael Arrington, \u201cI\u2019m Bored. What\u2019s Next?<\/a>\u201d TechCrunch, <\/em>December 30, 2012,\u00a0Accessed October 18, 2015.<\/li>\n
  5. Sheila Jasanoff, \u201cMaking Order: Law and Science in Action,\u201d In The Handbook of Science and Technology Studies<\/em>, edited by Edward J. Hackett, 3rd ed., 761\u201386. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press\u202f; Published in cooperation with the Society for the Social Studies of Science, 2008.<\/li>\n
  6. Noah Lang, \u201cEmployee or Contractor? Online Businesses Like Uber Need a New Category,<\/a>\u201d Newsweek<\/em>, June 21, 2015.<\/li>\n
  7. J. Benjamin Hurlbut, \u201cRemembering the Future: Science, Law, and the Legacy of Asilomar,\u201d In Dreamscapes of Modernity: Sociotechnical Imaginaries and the Fabrication of Power<\/em>, edited by Sheila Jasanoff and Sang-Hyun Kim. Chicago\u202f; London: The University of Chicago Press, 2015.<\/li>\n
  8. Sheila Jasanoff, Science at the Bar\u202f: Law, Science, and Technology in America<\/em> (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1995).<\/li>\n
  9. Hurlbut, \u201cRemembering the Future: Science, Law, and the Legacy of Asilomar,\u201d 128.<\/li>\n
  10. Ibid., 147.<\/li>\n
  11. Peter Thiel and Blake Masters,\u00a0Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future,<\/em>\u00a0Crown Publishing Group, 2014, 5.<\/li>\n
  12. Ibid., 8.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Further Reading:<\/strong><\/p>\n

    Bijker, Wiebe E. \u201cWhy and How Technology Matters,\u201d in Oxford Handbook of Contextual Political Analysis<\/em>, ed. Robert E. Goodin and Charles Tilly, 2006, 681\u2013706.<\/p>\n

    Hurlbut, J. Benjamin. \u201cRemembering the Future: Science, Law, and the Legacy of Asilomar.\u201d In Dreamscapes of Modernity: Sociotechnical Imaginaries and the Fabrication of Power<\/em>, edited by Sheila Jasanoff and Sang-Hyun Kim. Chicago\u202f; London: The University of Chicago Press, 2015.<\/p>\n

    Jasanoff, Sheila. \u201cMaking Order: Law and Science in Action.\u201d In The Handbook of Science and Technology Studies<\/em>, edited by Edward J. Hackett, 3rd ed., 761\u201386. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press\u202f; Published in cooperation with the Society for the Social Studies of Science, 2008.<\/p>\n

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