Disrupting Technology Disrupting Law

Abstract

This Commentary disrupts technology disrupting law. It suggests that “disruption” is increasingly becoming a framework when lawyers write about technology. It is argued that this disruption frame is problematic. It is problematic because it reveals a surprising presentism lacking both a sense of the past and a coherent vision of the future. Further, this presentism produces an essential contradiction. There is a vision of hyper-change; a tsunami of disruption needing law; nevertheless the forms of modern law seemingly endure. This opens to what is fundamentally worrying about the disruption frame. In its affirmation of modern law as able to manage disruption, the disruption frame obscures the significant transformation of law occurring in the digital. Technology is disrupting law in much more significant ways than is being considered by the disruption frame.