Human genetic information is best understood as a non-rivalrous and non-excludable social resource, making it well suited to commons-based governance as a complement to state- and market-led models. Using the case of deCODE Genetics in Iceland, the chapter shows the practical viability of such an approach, underscoring the importance of public cooperation, ethical safeguards, and consent. Yet the model faces a central dilemma: the need for broad data sharing to advance research versus the individual participant’s right to privacy. The chapter reframes this tension by conceptualizing privacy not as the negation of sharing but as one of its dimensions. It then resolves the dilemma by proposing a participatory, procedurally legitimate system in which stakeholders (including data contributors, researchers, and clinicians) collectively determine rules of access, use, and privacy through democratic deliberation. This approach moves beyond top-down declarations and instead establishes a self-governing genomic commons. A mutual benefit, procedurally democratic framework offers a promising path to realize the genome’s potential for public health while safeguarding individual rights.

This chapter critically reviews the success of existing algorithms in explaining and predicting human behaviour. While traditional statistical methods have limitations in this area, algorithmic approaches have gained popularity. The chapter covers a range of algorithms, including decision trees, neural networks and clustering algorithms, evaluating their strengths and limitations in various applications. It also considers ethical concerns, such as bias and privacy violations and the need for transparency and explainability. The chapter emphasises the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration between computer science, statistics and behavioural science, and the need for ongoing development and refinement of these methods. By evaluating the effectiveness of algorithmic approaches to human behaviour, this chapter is a valuable resource for researchers and practitioners in the field.

This chapter is about trust. It is the only chapter in the book that considers the opinions of professionals who had not used machine translation at work. Most of these professionals were prepared to use machine translation if needed. Some were enthusiastic about it. Others had reservations which they would want to see addressed before deciding to use a machine translation tool. These reservations included: (1) concerns about accuracy; (2) concerns about privacy and confidentiality; (3) perceptions of social and professional norms and whether their use of machine translation would be accepted by others; and (4) concerns about how machine translation may lack ‘the human touch’ in sensitive interactions. The chapter examines human communication in relation to the concept of empathy and AI’s ability to mimic it. It ends with a discussion of workplace training by exploring what machine translation users would like to see covered in initiatives aimed at enhancing their trust judgment abilities.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is used in criminal courtrooms to support judicial decision- making. Despite heavy criticism on opacity, complexity, non-contestability, or unfair discrimination, such uses have been favoured, given AI’s promises of efficiency, effectiveness, and accuracy in the overall decision-making process. Focusing on the use of AI-generated evidence, this chapter analyses various European frameworks on evidence and fair trial scheme, the data protection guarantees under the Law Enforcement Directive (LED) and the requirements for AI use by the judiciary set out by the AI Act. We assess whether and to what degree the use of AI in criminal courtrooms can respect fundamental European principles regarding human rights and defence rights.

One of the most contentious issues relting to sex and gender identity is whether a transgener person has a right to keep informaiton about their biological sex private from others. Related to the right to freedom of expression, discussed in previous chapters, is the countervailing right to private life. Nowhere encapsulates the potential for human rights to conflict more clearly than the tension between the interest of one person to disclose information that another party would rather be kept private. This chapter examines circumstances when it may be lawful to disclose information about the biological sex of another when they would strongly wish that information not be shared at all. Relatedly, it explores circumstances when heightened rights of privacy may obtain as a result of data protection obligations placed on businesses and public bodies. There is no absolute right to keep the fact of one’s sex private, but there may be some circumstances where one has a reasonable expectation of privacy and where disclosure may be unlawful.

Defamation is a ubiquitous tort in modern society. Defamation protects a person’s reputation, rather than their bodily integrity, goods or land. With the rapid expansion of social media, it is frighteningly easy for false and disparaging comments to spread online like wildfire. This chapter introduces the tort of defamation and its purpose in society. Defamation has undergone substantial reform over the years, thus key amendments are explained, along with emerging issues. The chapter outlines and explains the elements of defamation and explores cases that clarify how courts interpret and apply defamation principles. Next, defences and remedies are explained, followed by the increasing focus on defamation and social media. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of privacy and breach of confidentiality, on which plaintiffs can rely when defamation does not assist.

Erasure codes find various applications: Each of those puts different constraints on the erasure code, for example, on the blocklength, code rate, decoding complexity, or number of decoding operations. This chapter discusses some of them.

There are all sorts of dilemmas when it comes to technology and education. How much should be allowed in schools? Do teachers have to worry about students’ data security and privacy? Is it ok for you to ask a computer to write your essay for you? Are we ruining the eyesight and attention spans of an entire generation thanks to excessive screen time? This chapter looks at the debates that exist when it comes to digital technology and education. It will be argued here that the interplay between technology and education is highly complex – and changing – at a pace that is almost unimaginable.

This contribution to understanding friendship as a distinct social relationship examines the distinction between friendship dyads and groups of friends by focusing on the communicative dynamics of intimacy and discretion. Drawing on the work of Simmel and Luhmann, I argue that dyadic friendship supports intimate communication characterized by immediacy, mutual disclosure, and the suspension of self-consciousness. The addition of a third party, however, shifts interaction into public mode, requiring increased discretion and greater communicative management. I offer a formal account of how the number of participants alters the quality of interaction and suggest that while intimacy is not a constant feature of friendship, it nevertheless remains a constitutive potential. To conclude, I argue that groups of friends can be intimate social formations only insofar as endogenous, “private” dyadic bonds are formed.

Chapter 6 reconstructs the technology-specific legal contours of freedom of expression in the Internet age, presenting empirical evidence of the growing importance of technology for legal practice and regulation. Since data-processing technology is a prerequisite for free speech, the starting point is privacy law. An important distinction is made between data integrity and network integrity and the discussion on net neutrality and the open Internet is revisited. The case law of the ECtHR on Article 10 ECHR is also examined to see if there is a tendency to recognise an independent ‘right to transmit’. Moreover, the activities of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) can be seen to produce technology-related standards relevant to the freedom of expression. ICANN, which is responsible for routing data packets to their destination, controls the ‘master key’ to the entire global Internet and can thus influence the conditions under which freedom of communication is possible. Finally, the chapter addresses the technical standards for the Internet developed by the independent Internet Architecture Board and the Internet Engineering Task Force, which are also crucial for the freedom of expression.

Chapter 6 looks at the failures of educational innovation during the Covid-19 crisis. As schools scrambled to adapt to remote learning, remote proctoring technologies rapidly expanded. They implemented surveillance systems that violated student privacy and disproportionately harmed vulnerable students. Despite claims of maintaining academic integrity, remote proctoring created a stressful, punitive environment that prioritized monitoring over genuine educational support while failing to do nearly enough to address the inequalities at the heart of accessing and using digital resources. Sadly, the rush to innovate missed crucial opportunities to upgrade core educational infrastructure and truly support students during a time of unprecedented challenge. As if this wasn’t bad enough, some schools continue to use remote proctoring software. A pandemic problem has thus become the new normal.

Chapter 5, “The Failed Promise of Covid Innovation,” presents the pandemic as a crucial case study of how innovative thinking let us down at a time of great vulnerability. Simply put, the early days of massive fatalities made COVID-19 a health crisis. But those days also can be seen as a powerful lens for understanding high-tech failure. From contact tracing apps to thermal imaging cameras and digital vaccine passports, there was a fever pitch of government and corporate enthusiasm for innovative solutionism that was predestined to be unreliable and, thus, in context, dangerous. While we acknowledge remarkable breakthroughs like the rapid development of mRNA vaccines, we also make the case that additional effective responses could have come from upgrading existing systems rather than trying to do things entirely new.

Chapter 3 dives deep into the beating heart of cryptocurrency, the paradoxical technology that has made early adherents billions, while adding nothing of real value to society. By any measure, crypto has failed at its stated goal: creating a better financial system. Looking to Bitcoin, we show how the core innovation – a distributed encrypted database – makes a terrible payment system, with slow, expensive, uncorrectable transactions. But crypto enthusiasts ignore more than a decade of failure, doubling down on grandiose claims about solving everything from financial inclusion to corporate governance while ignoring the far easier, low-tech solutions to these very real needs. We include an interview with an early supporter of the massive crypto currency Ethereum, who came to see how crypto became “just a tool for the wealthy to become wealthier” rather than fulfilling its promise of financial inclusion for the world’s 1.7 billion unbanked people.

Chapter 4 critically examines the fact that sometimes innovations not only fail to solve crucial problems, but are the problem itself. Specifically, it explains why Ring doorbell exemplifies the threat of home surveillance innovation. The billion-dollar Amazon subsidiary sold millions of Americans on the promise of security via surveillance without any credible evidence that its system works. But rather than encouraging people to adopt proven security upgrades, such as better locks and secure package drops, Ring wins customers by making its digital innovation seem essential amid a climate of rising fear. By fighting against boring yet effective alternatives, Ring’s anxiety-inducing features have further normalized intensive networked surveillance and helped turn innocuous neighborly interactions into potential threats.

Inter-Asian Law is starkly absent from constitutional accounts of reproductive rights in Asia. Instead, Asian jurisdictions tend to draw from the Global North, with the United States Supreme Court decision in Roe v Wade occupying norm status. To explicate the potential of Inter-Asian Law in transforming reproductive rights, an act of imagination is required, suspending Roe as the central comparative frame and introducing alternate, hypothetical referents from Asia. This chapter conducts this task at two stages. First, it develops imagination as a method of comparative constitutional law. Second, applying the imaginative method, it hypothesizes what reproductive rights might look like if Nepal served as a referent for India and India as a referent for Bangladesh. In documenting explicit shifts in the constitutional construction of these rights, the chapter cements the place of Inter-Asian Law.