CRISP lecture at University of Edinburgh

Abstract
Law assumes that matter is passive while mind is active. This assumption no longer holds. In her talk Hildebrandt will discuss some of the core issues raised in her book,  Smart Technologies and the End(s) of Law (2015). First of all, she will explain what she has called ‘a new animism’ that increasingly ‘drives’ commercial enterprise, social intercourse, and even public administration. A new type of - data driven - agency seems to shape both our everyday ‘everyware’ and our own agency. Things, critical infrastructure and public and private bodies base their decisions and their behaviour on the data driven predictions of our machine readable behaviours. Second, this generates new issues for law, the rule of law and the practice of democratic theory. Most notably it seems to undermine the idea of equal respect and concern for individual human beings as ends in themselves, acknowledging that such respect and concern has political implications far beyond the so-called liberal human subject.

Profile
Professor Mireille Hildebrandt holds the Chair of Smart Environments, Data Protection and the Rule of Law at the Institute for Computing and Information Sciences (iCIS) at Radboud University, Nijmegen. She is a Research Professor in the research group for Law, Science, Technology and Society (LSTS) at Vrije Universiteit Brussels.

Please contact Professor Charles Raab if you would like to attend: c.d.raab@ed.ac.uk