Edinburgh: Governance Of New Technologies

GOVERNANCE OF NEW TECHNOLOGIES:
THE TRANSFORMATION OF MEDICINE, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY

An International Interdisciplinary Conference
March 29-31, 2009
University of Edinburgh

SCOPE OF THE CONFERENCE

BROAD THEMES

The conference will focus on evolving and emerging technologies and new-technology-driven practices and their impact on the overlapping fields of (1) healthcare, (2) information technology and (3) intellectual property, each of which are increasingly important in the post-genomic and post-AI world, with its heavy reliance on new technologies and their distribution.

SPECIFIC AIMS & OBJECTIVES

The overarching objective is for participants to explore technical, social and legal issues related to the governance of technologies that are emergent in, and shaping, these fields of human/legal endeavour (eg: healthcare, information technology and intellectual property). The topic areas are drafted deliberately broadly so as to encourage maximum participation and attendance, but subject technologies will include stem cell research, synthetic biology, patenting in the life sciences, artificial intelligence, regulation through code, and so on. Particular problems that will be investigated are:

(1) how to define the scope of and protect fundamental rights such as privacy and freedom of association in the techno-world;

(2) how to reconcile in the law conflicting moral positions around the use of human tissue in biotech innovation;

(3) how to engineer the international IP system to better reflect aspirations for global equality; and

(4) how to integrate intelligent technologies into existing social constructs and legal frameworks.

Another important aim of this conference is to create an international and interdisciplinary forum in which academics and non-academics (practitioners, policy-makers, etc.) from the UK and beyond can discuss their research and ideas (both in the Plenary and Parallel Sessions and outwith), and network with each other in a collegial environment. This will encourage both collaboration and potentially long-term relationships amongst academics, particularly early career researchers, and it will generate knowledge (particularly interdisciplinary knowledge) which can be transformed into practical policy advices and initiatives.

Additionally, the conference will serve as a celebration of the success of SCRIPTed – A Journal of Law, Technology & Society, on its fifth anniversary. SCRIPTed is an open-access, online, peer-reviewed journal hosted by the University of Edinburgh, which, in its first five years, has moved from strength to strength and is now becoming a leader in the field of academic thought around the interaction of law and technology. This conference will highlight and enhance this leadership role and serve to push SCRIPTed into its next phase of life. It will see its scope expand and therefore its readership broaden into new areas, including more explicit considerations of the three-way interaction between law, technology and society.

SCHOLARLY IMPORTANCE & TIMELINESS

The intellectual agenda is to advance the synthesis of diverse knowledges around technology governance in a variety of interrelated but often discretely considered fields, and to therefore broaden the perspective of all participants and enrich future research as a whole. As we advance farther into the techno-science society, we will have to better understand the interactions between law, technology and society, and in particular the multiple directions of influence emanating from these three fields, which, in any event, increasingly overlap. As such, the conference is both responsive to shifts in human endeavour but also at the vanguard of pushing those shifts. In addition, it is expected that more focussed disciplinary expertise within these fields will be advanced (ie: it is not just about interdisciplinary or cross-over thinking/research, but also about promoting excellence within fields).

ENGAGEMENT & DISSEMINATION

We intend to attract scholars and policy-makers via specific invitations and an open online registration which will be advertised in a range of forms, from online notice-boards, to newsletters, to popular blogs, to both digital and hardcopy flyers and mail-outs, to directed emails.

We intend to attract civil society organisations and the broader public through specific invitations and by advertising in popular media; these participants are considered important as both users and influencers of technology, and as potential repositories/generators of creative ideas around the integration of technologies in society.

We will engage with participants/stakeholders through the networking reception and the Plenary and Parallel Sessions, but also through a public forum session which would encourage non-academic participants to articulate their interests and explore with us the issues that are the subject of the conference.

In addition to the media (which will be invited), dissemination will be facilitated by publication of the best papers presented at the conference, including the keynote papers, in SCRIPTed, an open access, online, peer-reviewed journal of international repute. (SCRIPTed has readers in 123 countries, including the UK, USA, Canada, India, Australia, Germany, Peru, Argentina, and has had 60,134 visits in the last year, 48,116 of them being unique.) We will also make available on the SCRIPTed and related websites podcasts of some of the talks, with an invitation for people to respond (through the SCRIPTed website). A brief report of the conference and its primary conclusions will also be prepared and distributed to interested government departments in the UK and beyond.

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