ABSTRACT
This chapter explains two modes of technological disruption, impacting on both the substance of legal rules and the form of regulation, and generating, in turn, three mind-sets—coherentist, regulatory-instrumentalist, and technocratic—that may manifest themselves in legal and regulatory discourse and debates. Whereas legal rules back their prescriptions with expost penal, compensatory, or restorative measures, the focus of technological management is entirely exante, aiming to anticipate and prevent wrongdoing rather than punish or compensate after the event. ‘Regulation’ is generally understood as a process of directing regulatees, monitoring and detecting deviation, and correcting for non-compliance, all of this relative to specified regulatory purposes. The regulatory mind-set is, at all stages, instrumental. The fact of the matter is that legal and regulatory responses to emerging technologies vary from one technology to another, from one legal system to another, and from one time to another.
