Mon, 09/21/2020
What do you do when there is a global pandemic? You definitely do not plan conferences and events.
This is the reality we found ourselves in last spring, like so many other academic centers around the country. We quickly realized we couldn’t depend on the typical methods of facilitating and sharing academic research when deciding how to launch and structure our Center in fall 2020. Turning that concern into a positive, we decided that as a brand-new center, we had an opportunity to think bigger and shoot for a bigger stage.
Tech Refactored isn’t just a podcast – it’s our attempt to rewrite the code of academic events to better map onto the modern research endeavor. This is to say, we want to extract the best parts of long academic events, debates, and conferences and condense that down to the most interesting and relevant material – and share it with anyone who wants it. This approach honors our core focus as a center: interdisciplinary collaboration. No matter what industry you work in technology and law touch your life. This podcast is for you.
In our first episode, This is Tech Refactored, our founder and director, Professor Gus Hurwitz hosts our new faculty for a discussion on who and what we are – as well as covering some hot topics. From Tik Tok to predictive grading in schools, the conversation got both funny and terrifying.
Elana Zeide and Kyle Langvardt joined Nebraska Law this year and their distinct expertise in the First Amendment and its relationship to technology is a fascinating listen. Christal Sheppard and Justin Firestone have joined the Center as Distinguished Fellows teaching courses in intellectual property and cyberlaw respectively. Justin’s work is truly captivating, focused on synthetic biology and software that can program our cells. Christal shares her take on the jurisdiction-less world of international patents.
In all, our first episode gives listeners a perspective of current issues in law and technology, while getting introduced to us as a Center – and I hope you’ll enjoy it. I truly enjoyed being a part of it.
Coming up next in episode two, is a wild ride with some of our favorite law & tech scholars – BJ Ard, Ryan Calo, Rebecca Crootof, Josh Fairfield, Woody Hartzog, and Meg Leta Jones – discussing “What is Law and Technology?” We’re still in production as I write this, but I can confirm, things get just as hilarious as they do esoteric. Among other things, we discuss competing visions of whether law and technology is a unique field, whether it has a methodology or even itself is a methodology, and whether questions about law and technology are mooted by the assertion that law is technology.
Our goal with Tech Refactored is to bring sophisticated conversations about law, technology, governance, and society to anyone out there with the desire to learn about this complex and nuanced subject.
Thanks for listening,
Elsbeth Magilton
Executive Producer of Tech Refactored
Tags: Center News
