Prerequisite: None

Exam Type: No Exam

Technological change is arguably the most powerful force transforming modern market societies. This course is designed to provide an introduction and overview to how to think about what drives the rate and direction of technological change, how it shapes society and the environment and is shaped by market dynamics, and how law shapes, and is shaped by, continuous rapid technological change. The intensive winter term course is also designed to train you in intensive team work around rapid identification and diagnosis of emerging policy questions and effective written and oral presentation of these matters. The course will combine several basic framing lectures with daily in-class and out-of-class work on team projects exploring distinct questions or challenges that are live policy debates at the time of the course.

At present, primary areas of concern revolve around artificial intelligence, robotics, energy transition, data governance, and materials (e.g. plastics, minerals used in computational and energy storage devices) but topics change from year to year as conditions and conflicts change.