iSchool Research Symposium: Ryan Calo
Title: The Scale and the Reactor
Abstract: The mainstream American legal academy, no less than American society as a whole, has struggled to understand and address new technology. Law professors are finally beginning to draw from science and technology studies (STS), a longstanding field devoted to greater nuance in the interplay between technology and society. This new direction for the field holds the potential to improve the quality and rigor of legal analysis of technology. Yet even as law and technology embraces STS, the field must take care not to abandon the normativity and pragmatism that characterizes and distinguishes American legal scholarship.
Speaker Bio: Ryan Calo is the Lane Powell and D. Wayne Gittinger Professor at the University of Washington School of Law, and a Professor at the Information School. He is a founding co-director (with Batya Friedman and Tadayoshi Kohno) of the interdisciplinary Tech Policy Lab and (with Chris Coward, Emma Spiro, Kate Starbird, and Jevin West) co-founded the Center for an Informed Public. Professor Calo holds an adjunct appointment at the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering. He researches the intersection of law and emerging technology with an emphasis on privacy, automation, and disinformation.