Legal Regulation, Technological Management and the Future of Human Agency

This article examines the role of human agency within two competing regulatory paradigms: law and technological management. It sketches both paradigms and suggests that the direction of regulatory travel in familiar jurisdictions is from the former towards the latter. It then examines the possible effect of this transition upon human agency. It defends a general account of agency, distinguishing that notion from autonomy, and shows that that account informs the legal regulatory paradigm. It then considers whether agency, so conceived, can persist and flourish within a technological management regulatory context. It does so by reference to a thought-experiment. That experiment, and two of three responses to it, assumes that agency can be quantified, and the article shows how this can be done. It concludes that a transition from legal regulation to technological management will reduce the amount of human agency in the world and imperil other important values.