Can law keep up? : runaway technology / Joshua A.T. Fairfield, Washington University, St Louis.

Cambridge, United Kingdom ; New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, 2020.

K487.T4 F35 2020

9781108426121 (hardback)
1108426123
9781108444576 (paperback
1108444571
9781108545839 (ebook)

viii, 298 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

(OCoLC)1326332939

"A Conversational Method Law should be understood as a system for adapting human social technology to human physical technology. Law runs on language, and it upgrades according to the rules of language. So as we discuss those rules and the role they play in the development of law, I would like to do so at the same time. My aim is for this book to be an example of this method. This book tries to develop language we can use to talk about how to develop the kind of language (law) that will help us survive the future. I will try to state my understanding of how things are and how things ought to be straightforwardly. It is important to me to be clear enough to be understood where I am right, and identifiably wrong where I am wrong. But even if stated forcefully, everything I say here is to be taken provisionally, as an introduction to a conversation. That is because a book is only half a conversation. A book is only paper until read, and the reader brings more than half the meaning to the table. If I mean to say-as I do mean to say-that life-giving language arises from community and context, then I must admit that I am missing your half of the conversation. I wish that this book were closer in form to a conversation, such that you could respond to what I say here, and I could accept your criticism, and we could develop more precise and better language for talking about the issue. That is how we would make progress"-- Provided by publisher.

Includes index.

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