Law used to govern technology from the outside. Today, it governs from within, or not at all.
Then came the claim that changed the terms of the debate: code is law. If software architecture determines what can and cannot be done online, then those who write it govern. The response, law as code, promises to restore legal authority by rendering rules executable, yet it unsettles the legislative process it was meant to serve. Artificial intelligence, Blockchain, and quantum technologies now bring this confrontation to its sharpest point. Can law retain its authority over systems whose workings escape it? And might technology, conversely, renew the instruments of law itself?
This volume takes up the question across three parts, from reflections on artificial intelligence to Blockchain and quantum technologies. It gathers eighteen contributions from jurists, computer scientists, philosophers and practitioners working in Europe, Asia, and Canada, brought together by an international colloquium held in Grenoble. Rather than argue in the abstract, the contributors work from concrete terrains: decentralised autonomous organisations, judicial decision-making, metaverses and intellectual property, the shaping of public opinion on AI, and the strategic stakes of quantum technologies. The tension between open and proprietary technologies runs throughout.The book is addressed to legal scholars and practitioners confronted with the regulation of emerging technologies, to researchers in the social sciences and computer science working on technological governance, and to policymakers who must decide how far law can be written into machines. Graduate students in digital law, intellectual property, and technology policy will find in it a state-of- the-art overview.
