Reflecting on the Future of Law and Technology Education: Using Film and Television as a Tool to Teach the Ethical, Legal and Social Implications of Emerging Technologies

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated a long-standing problem in postsecondary education: the competition for student attention in a world full of more interesting distractions. This problem is magnified in the teaching of the ethical legal and social implications of new and emerging technologies ("ELSI") where the technologies are often complicated, the legal concerns esoteric and non-intuitive, the social issues non-obvious, and the ethical analysis constantly shifting. To teach students in a time where they are both physically and mentally distant from the educator, this Essay aims to provide a solution that appropriates the distractions and repurposes them into the educational process. More than just using media as a crutch for learning, we should place it at the center of the course and as the source from which all the other learning evolves. Black Mirror-the British anthology series that is just steps ahead of our current timeline with regard to emerging technologies-is a perfect lynchpin for such a course. Herein, this Essay describes the purpose of such a course, as well as additional aspects of the curriculum-including socially distanced interviews with stakeholders within the science-fiction film industry. My goal is to provide students with the necessary skills to not only examine emerging technology through the ELSI lens, but to inculcate them with the appreciation that everything, even simple television, can be a learning opportunity.