Toward a General Theory of Law and Technology: Introduction

Creators of new technologies seek to signal a message of novelty and improvement. Instinctively, many of us want to endorse the message and believe that this new technology will improve our lives. There is an intuitive desire to believe that a new technology is special and unique. Consequently, regulators, judges and scholars tend to look at each new technology in isolation. For example, scholars tend to focus on the study of either communications law or the law of medical technologies, often specializing in the legal study of a specific technology, such as the Internet or genetics.1 Similarly,