Books

EU regulatory initiatives concerning technology-related topics have spiked over the past few years. On the basis of its Priorities Programme, which is focused on making Europe ‘Fit for the Digital Age’, the European Commission has been busily releasing new texts aimed at regulating a number of technology topics, including data uses, online platforms, cybersecurity, and artificial intelligence.

This book identifies three phenomena which are common to all EU digital technologies-relevant regulatory initiatives: act-ification, GDPR mimesis, and regulatory brutality. These three phenomena serve as indicators or early signs of a new European technology law-making paradigm that now seems ready to emerge. They divulge new-found confidence on the part of the EU digital technologies legislator, who has now asserted for itself the right to form policy options and create new rules in the field for all of Europe.

Bringing together an analysis of the regulatory initiatives for the management of technology topics in the EU for the first time, this book will be of interest to academics, policymakers, and practitioners, sparking academic and policymaking interest and discussion.

This book outlines a new political philosophy that is based on information and its processing.

Aristotelians will appreciate the analysis; those siding with Plato (there are only two kinds of people, as Coleridge said), less so. In essence, it supports Aristotle’s argument by complementing his intuitively correct but unsupported and never fully elaborated claim that states are natural to humans. It corrects Plato and his epigones (practically every political philosopher ever since) by refuting their claim (considered a given today) that states are artificial, the product of agreement among humans.

It is based on only two basic, and straightforward, premises. Therefore, understanding it (but not necessarily appreciating it—for that one has to follow the order of things) can be achieved in anything from a few minutes (see only Chapters 7 and 19) to a few hours (add Chapters 8, 9 and 11), a few days (Chapter 7 onwards) or a few months and beyond (read also Chapters 1–6). Each chapter is independently written specifically for this purpose, and therefore, there is some repetition. Notes (only paragraphs marked with an asterisk are annotated, at the end of the book) are there to help explain—but they do add considerably to the times just promised.