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show up all around us — that’s what’s possible. But what’s legal?
CT: What might legal educators want to ask, to help them understand how to bridge that gap?
Christian: The overarching questions are: What do we really want from these technolo- gies? What kind of future do we want to live in? My professional experience over the years has been in instructional design for general education, but now that I’ve merged into the field of legal education (it’s been nearly one year), my lenses, if you will, are tuned differ- ently. Still, no matter what discipline you are working in, those are the key questions to ask.
CT: Looking for a moment through your “lenses” tuned to the legal field, who should be asking those questions?
Christian: Lawyers, judges, attorney generals, legislators, senators, representatives and peo- ple in the corporate world who are developing these technologies. All of these people — and for that matter, each of us — could help society more, given some deep reflection about why
decisions about it.”
we are employing specific technologies and what we want from them.
CT: But you’d expect different ideas from different people, wouldn’t you?
Christian: Yes, that’s true. And ultimately the related decisions about technology will hap- pen in different places and in different ways. But from my legal education perspective, I’ve seen a big gap in the general understanding of what’s possible and what’s legal. I’m trying to close that gap.
CT: Then let’s talk a bit about the process of understanding what’s possible.
Christian: That’s an important piece of the puz- zle, of course — especially given the investment large companies have in developing technolo- gies behind the curtain before introducing them to consumers. Generally speaking, do I know before launch what Apple is developing, or Google, or Amazon, or Microsoft, or IBM? How do most people know that until the com- panies have actually come out with their announcements? And at that point, where do I stand in terms of being able to make effective
“In some cases, technology changes before we can experience it enough to learn how to manage it and make good
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