Muscle enhancing neuro-chip technologies, deep learning artificial intelligence capable of recognizing objects and translating speech in real time, and prenatal DNA sequencing are but a few examples of the latest technological breakthroughs. Combined with a growing online population hooked on an open read-right web 2.0 culture and an evolving “Internet of things“, exemplify the level of advancement and sophistication of our 21st century knowledge-based economy (KBE). Defined as an “economy that is directly based on the production, distribution, and use of knowledge and information”, the “big data” tsunami generated in the KBE is driving radical changes to the structures of society, inside and out.
A problem arises, however, when the composite of society’s structures are a set of legal principles and notions that chained to a 19th century industrial context. Worded differently, as rapidly evolving technologies drive society forward into the future, our legal institutions tend to look backwards in time for solutions to novel problems and emerging phenomena. The discordance this creates between law and the information society is not unlike tectonic plates moving in opposite directions, the effects of which are most noticeably expressed in the incessant debate on the shaken (not stirred) right to privacy, which arguably lays near the epicentre of the discordance between law and the networked digital information society.
In an earlier post, mention was made of how modern Japanese architects sought to integrate the notion of human security inside Japanese architecture in a post-3/11 context. Brief mention was also made of how sea walls and urban planning failed to protect smaller communities from the tsunami. It was also said that in densely populated areas of Japan that remained unaffected by the 3/11 tsunami, Japanese architecture had developed a nuanced relationship of private and public that facilitated communication as well as a higher sense of community.
From a theoretical standpoint, a legal system that fails to guard against a “data deluge” may be no less devastating than the tsunami was to Japan, with one difference being that the damages are harder to perceive. While human security in its most elementary meaning signifies life preservation, human security in the information society and knowledge economy must take on a more evolved, high-cultured meaning, one that seeks to protect the inner and outer core of human identity. As the information society moves forward into the future, letting go of unnecessary traditions is an imperative to preserve traditional necessities that shape advanced economies.
