Technophilia, technophobia, and technobabble: the relationship between law and innovation

Professor Daithí Mac Síthigh's Inaugural Lecture

Is technological change something that legal scholars should consider? Should lawmakers and judges seek to exercise control over emerging technologies? Should innovation be seen as something worth embracing?

In this lecture, Daithí Mac Síthigh, first holder of a new chair in ‘law and innovation’ at Queen’s University Belfast, explores these controversial topics. Making reference to current debates (such as business models in the sharing economy) alongside older dilemmas concerning broadcasting, telecommunications, and the like, the extent to which legal measures can or should interact with the development of novel technologies is assessed. Today’s questions about the roles of national and supranational authorities in the face of the rapid dissemination of information across frontiers will be put in context.

Daithí Mac Síthigh joined QUB in 2017. Previously, he was Associate Dean of Research and Innovation in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, and Reader in Law, at Newcastle University (England); earlier posts were at the University of Edinburgh (Scotland) and the University of East Anglia (England), and he studied law (LLB, PhD) at Trinity College Dublin. Daithí is a co-investigator in the new UU/QUB Future Screens NI project (funded through the AHRC creative economy clusters programme, 2018-22), was co-investigator at CREATe, the centre for copyright and new business models in the creative economy (funded by AHRC, ESRC and EPSRC, 2012-17), and held the Arthurs Visiting Fellowship at Osgoode Hall Law School (Toronto) in autumn 2018. He is the author of one book (Medium Law, Routledge, 2017) and various articles and chapters on law, media, and technology, and tweets as @macsithigh.

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