LAW & TECHNOLOGY
OpenbookExamen: case studies, wright or wrong and other open questions (short article and identify
legal issues and give opinion)
PART I: TECHNOLOGY, ECONOMY & SOCIETY
1. THE IMPORTANCE OF INTERDISCIPLINARITY: technology + economy + society
Technology is neither good nor bad, nor is it neutral.
• Melvin Kranzberg (1986) Technology and History: “Kranzberg’s Laws”. Technology
and Culture, 27(3), 544-560. doi:10.2307/3105385
Technology is… autonomous Human-controlled
neutral Determinism: Instrumentalism
• people do think technology is • it is idd neutral, but it’s up to
neutral and as society we can’t individuals to decide how to use it
do anything about it en we just • comparisan: guns don’t kill people,
use it but people kill people
• technology drives social and • the technoligy itself can be ok, but
cultural change, so how people it’s about how people use it
it uses doesn’t matter
Value-laden: there are values Substantivism Critical theory
already inhearently in • guns are ment to kill people • technology does have certain
technology, because developed • how the individual uses it values already because the
by certain people or intended doesn’t matter developing by humans, but there
for certain purpose • technology is an autonomous are agencies as individuals
force and it is something • so the individual can still decide
inherently wrong how technology is used
• thinks about the way individuals
use technology is verry imortant
• has been seen in the development
of social media: to connect people
è as more people used it, there
were unintended tactics
• Ralf De Wolf, A societal perspective on technology and new media, in An introduction to law &
technology (2025, 4th Edition) Adapted from Feenberg
• DiDerent ways to look at technology
ó Technology ó society ó economy ó
• Which considerations should policymakers, legislators, lawyers, … take into
account?
o Some of the considerations will aDect the possibilities to regulate or the way in which
regulation will be the most eDective
1
,Technological considerations
• If you want to know how to regulate technology, you need to have knowledge about
technology:
• How does the technology work?
o How is the hardware (physical parts) / software (instructions / code)
designed?
o Which models are used?
o How are models trained?
o Which data is used?
§ Data used to train models as chatgpt (generative AI) are really important to
understand how they get to certain output
o Ex: how does certain information of you aDect what you get to see on your feed on social
media
• Who has designed the technology?
o Who you are as developer will aDect the design
• How well does the technology work?
o Ex: face recognition è is it accurate? è digital discrimination with people with dark
skin-color
• How secure is the technology?
o Many things you can buy online are often unsafe
Economic considerations
• Often the way economy is used is influenced by the way there is payed for it
• What is the business model (how are activities organised, how is value created, how
is money made?)
o Is a service free? è how do they make money than? è using data from users without
them knowing it?
§ > important from legal perspective: data protection, because sometimes there
need to be payed before they can use your data
o Is a service paid by advertising?
o Do we pay with our data or input?
• Who are the economic actors in the tech sector?
o Ecosystems (YouTube, Android, Google Play, Gemini -> Alphabet)
§ Alphabet has multiple services, so a lot of power and influence on society è the
way they change their services is very important (for example: very short answer
from AI, that is not always true)
o Some of the rules adopted on EU level, are often, because of the power of certain big
company’s in economic terms, because of the societal consequences and makes
politics take action
o Platforms
§ two-sided; e.g. Uber
• = connects a person who needs to go somewhere with a person with a
car
• Economically important to have enough persons on both sides
2
, • The way these platforms work have legal consequences for instance
with the way they work with the drivers
§ multi-sided; e.g. Uber Eats
• people that want to eat something, the restaurants and the people that
wright down descriptions
• How much economic power do tech companies hold?
o Ex: not easy for lots of young people to be on certain social media
• Which role do network externalities and lock-in play?
o more users = more value
o market tipping (so many benefits that outweigh costs)
o lock-in (switching costs too high)
o But you can end up in an certain situation where it’s hard to get out of it
o è relation: power of the platform (how it’s made) versus users
o Importance of interoperability è it needs to be easier to change
§ ex: diDerent chargers for diDerent electronics è changed by European
commission to USBC
societal considerations
• Artificial intellegence act: binding legislitif instrument from the EU trying to regulate AI and
there’s a list with AI driven systems that are prohibited because we don’t want them in the society
= this happens rarely
• Is the use of a certain technology desirable / acceptable / unacceptable?
• Are there potential negative eeects related to the use of the technology? for
individuals? for society? > importance of research
• How are (social, political, …) values shaped by technology?
o è See context of disinformation
• How do individuals use technology?
• How do cognitive abilities / biases influence the use of technology? Or how does
technology influence the way our brain works
o See dark patterns that tries to use our cognitive biases to try to sent us in a
certain direction
o privacy paradox, transparency paradox
§ privacy paradox: people care about privacy, but the way people act is not
beneficiary for there privacy of personal data
• Do individuals need certain skills to use the technology?
o media literacy / digital literacy: sometimes technology is complex and we
need certain skills and knowledge to be able to use it
§ ex: relation to cybersecurity: knowledge about knowing how fishing works and
paybacks afterwards
3
, applied on chatgpt ?
• Most AI applications come from one of the two leading countries in AI research and
investment. This means certain worldviews are favored in content processing and
production. > China and the USA
• The datasets that are used aren’t the best quality = technological aspect
• Otherwise this has a huge societal impact
• On top there is a huge ecological impact
• Economical impact: subscriptions è paying makes you getting better information
• The entire executive team of OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, is under 40
years old. This means that its language models reflect the specific ways of thinking
and knowing of one generation.
• Major chatbots have been trained on only about 100 of the world’s 7,000 natural
languages, with English as the primary source, given its predominance online. This
means that 99% of the world's languages are currently excluded from the giant
virtual library that underlies the most popular generative AI applications.
• Clearly, these problems are linguistic, cultural, generational, and geopolitical.
• Often we get very stereotypical answers = biases
• As society we don’t really know which data is used
• Possibly side eDects such as suicide
Instagram ?
• Important to know the algorithme works
• Digital services act has obliged companies of these platforms to be able to
personalize your feed
• Economical questions: influencer content
• Important link between economic en ecological considerations: they want you to
stay as long as possible on the platform, because the longer you stay the more you
get advertising and the longer you stay the more it is dieicult to leave
• Societal considerations: it makes it easy to interact en stay in contact with people,
see the news
o ó Otherwise: political influence, mental health and digital literacy (do we
know how everything really works such as personalizing your feed)
4
OpenbookExamen: case studies, wright or wrong and other open questions (short article and identify
legal issues and give opinion)
PART I: TECHNOLOGY, ECONOMY & SOCIETY
1. THE IMPORTANCE OF INTERDISCIPLINARITY: technology + economy + society
Technology is neither good nor bad, nor is it neutral.
• Melvin Kranzberg (1986) Technology and History: “Kranzberg’s Laws”. Technology
and Culture, 27(3), 544-560. doi:10.2307/3105385
Technology is… autonomous Human-controlled
neutral Determinism: Instrumentalism
• people do think technology is • it is idd neutral, but it’s up to
neutral and as society we can’t individuals to decide how to use it
do anything about it en we just • comparisan: guns don’t kill people,
use it but people kill people
• technology drives social and • the technoligy itself can be ok, but
cultural change, so how people it’s about how people use it
it uses doesn’t matter
Value-laden: there are values Substantivism Critical theory
already inhearently in • guns are ment to kill people • technology does have certain
technology, because developed • how the individual uses it values already because the
by certain people or intended doesn’t matter developing by humans, but there
for certain purpose • technology is an autonomous are agencies as individuals
force and it is something • so the individual can still decide
inherently wrong how technology is used
• thinks about the way individuals
use technology is verry imortant
• has been seen in the development
of social media: to connect people
è as more people used it, there
were unintended tactics
• Ralf De Wolf, A societal perspective on technology and new media, in An introduction to law &
technology (2025, 4th Edition) Adapted from Feenberg
• DiDerent ways to look at technology
ó Technology ó society ó economy ó
• Which considerations should policymakers, legislators, lawyers, … take into
account?
o Some of the considerations will aDect the possibilities to regulate or the way in which
regulation will be the most eDective
1
,Technological considerations
• If you want to know how to regulate technology, you need to have knowledge about
technology:
• How does the technology work?
o How is the hardware (physical parts) / software (instructions / code)
designed?
o Which models are used?
o How are models trained?
o Which data is used?
§ Data used to train models as chatgpt (generative AI) are really important to
understand how they get to certain output
o Ex: how does certain information of you aDect what you get to see on your feed on social
media
• Who has designed the technology?
o Who you are as developer will aDect the design
• How well does the technology work?
o Ex: face recognition è is it accurate? è digital discrimination with people with dark
skin-color
• How secure is the technology?
o Many things you can buy online are often unsafe
Economic considerations
• Often the way economy is used is influenced by the way there is payed for it
• What is the business model (how are activities organised, how is value created, how
is money made?)
o Is a service free? è how do they make money than? è using data from users without
them knowing it?
§ > important from legal perspective: data protection, because sometimes there
need to be payed before they can use your data
o Is a service paid by advertising?
o Do we pay with our data or input?
• Who are the economic actors in the tech sector?
o Ecosystems (YouTube, Android, Google Play, Gemini -> Alphabet)
§ Alphabet has multiple services, so a lot of power and influence on society è the
way they change their services is very important (for example: very short answer
from AI, that is not always true)
o Some of the rules adopted on EU level, are often, because of the power of certain big
company’s in economic terms, because of the societal consequences and makes
politics take action
o Platforms
§ two-sided; e.g. Uber
• = connects a person who needs to go somewhere with a person with a
car
• Economically important to have enough persons on both sides
2
, • The way these platforms work have legal consequences for instance
with the way they work with the drivers
§ multi-sided; e.g. Uber Eats
• people that want to eat something, the restaurants and the people that
wright down descriptions
• How much economic power do tech companies hold?
o Ex: not easy for lots of young people to be on certain social media
• Which role do network externalities and lock-in play?
o more users = more value
o market tipping (so many benefits that outweigh costs)
o lock-in (switching costs too high)
o But you can end up in an certain situation where it’s hard to get out of it
o è relation: power of the platform (how it’s made) versus users
o Importance of interoperability è it needs to be easier to change
§ ex: diDerent chargers for diDerent electronics è changed by European
commission to USBC
societal considerations
• Artificial intellegence act: binding legislitif instrument from the EU trying to regulate AI and
there’s a list with AI driven systems that are prohibited because we don’t want them in the society
= this happens rarely
• Is the use of a certain technology desirable / acceptable / unacceptable?
• Are there potential negative eeects related to the use of the technology? for
individuals? for society? > importance of research
• How are (social, political, …) values shaped by technology?
o è See context of disinformation
• How do individuals use technology?
• How do cognitive abilities / biases influence the use of technology? Or how does
technology influence the way our brain works
o See dark patterns that tries to use our cognitive biases to try to sent us in a
certain direction
o privacy paradox, transparency paradox
§ privacy paradox: people care about privacy, but the way people act is not
beneficiary for there privacy of personal data
• Do individuals need certain skills to use the technology?
o media literacy / digital literacy: sometimes technology is complex and we
need certain skills and knowledge to be able to use it
§ ex: relation to cybersecurity: knowledge about knowing how fishing works and
paybacks afterwards
3
, applied on chatgpt ?
• Most AI applications come from one of the two leading countries in AI research and
investment. This means certain worldviews are favored in content processing and
production. > China and the USA
• The datasets that are used aren’t the best quality = technological aspect
• Otherwise this has a huge societal impact
• On top there is a huge ecological impact
• Economical impact: subscriptions è paying makes you getting better information
• The entire executive team of OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, is under 40
years old. This means that its language models reflect the specific ways of thinking
and knowing of one generation.
• Major chatbots have been trained on only about 100 of the world’s 7,000 natural
languages, with English as the primary source, given its predominance online. This
means that 99% of the world's languages are currently excluded from the giant
virtual library that underlies the most popular generative AI applications.
• Clearly, these problems are linguistic, cultural, generational, and geopolitical.
• Often we get very stereotypical answers = biases
• As society we don’t really know which data is used
• Possibly side eDects such as suicide
Instagram ?
• Important to know the algorithme works
• Digital services act has obliged companies of these platforms to be able to
personalize your feed
• Economical questions: influencer content
• Important link between economic en ecological considerations: they want you to
stay as long as possible on the platform, because the longer you stay the more you
get advertising and the longer you stay the more it is dieicult to leave
• Societal considerations: it makes it easy to interact en stay in contact with people,
see the news
o ó Otherwise: political influence, mental health and digital literacy (do we
know how everything really works such as personalizing your feed)
4
