The Centre for Technology, Ethics, and Law in Society (TELOS) - Big Data
The technological landscape is constantly evolving, yet our legal and regulatory frameworks often struggle to adapt to these developments. Professor Karen Yeung is one of the core academic members of The Centre for Technology, Ethics and Law in Society (TELOS), a research centre based within the Transnational Law Institute at the Dickson Poon School of Law that focuses on the ‘legal, ethical, and social implications’ of new technologies. Professor Yeung and her colleagues in TELOS work to provide a critical forum in which issues of governance, policy, and regulation at the intersection of law and technology can be explored more fully.
Technological developments are emerging within a variety of areas, but one such technology – Big Data – is having an impact across many of these sectors. Although the potential applications of Big Data analytics are far from being fully explored, one increasingly important application involves the use of Big Data techniques to acquire insight into human behavior. This information is cultivated from the algorithmic processing of massive data sets, a development made feasible by the massive amounts of digital information now generated through social media, telecommunications, and online marketplaces, as well as increases in computing power and decreases in data storage costs. Insights created by Big Data are being been utilized in many fields, such as web commerce, medical research, and manufacturing systems, as well as in the delivery of public services, including predictive policing. The repercussions from this technology have prompted some scholars to describe Big Data as the ‘next industrial revolution’. The comparison links this technology with the game-changing manufacturing developments initiated in the 19th and 20th centuries by innovators such as Henry Ford that changed the industrial landscape forever.
While this technology certainly has important implications for how we understand ourselves, our environment and the very concept of knowledge itself, the legal implications are similarly profound. Big Data has the capacity to change the legal landscape, but reflection is necessary in order to ensure that these insights are being used in positive ways and not infringing on human rights and fundamental values. These issues raised by Big Data, in addition to the many other emerging technologies changing the way individuals interact with the law, will continue to be probed by Professor Yeung and her colleagues within TELOS as they respond to new technological developments across the globe.