There has been a vigorous, decades-long debate around the governance of digital technology – one conducted variously in the public sphere, in academia, and among regulators and legislators – with a discernible impact on the development and use of consumer-facing technologies. These technologies include the Internet and applications built on top of it; AI and machine learning; and the digital platforms that began as individual apps but then became themselves a more comprehensive, at times totalizing, infrastructure of ubiquitous sensors, data, and user analysis. 

This course will contextualize today’s technology-driven policy challenges in terms of some of the complex technical, legal, and political arcs of digital governance. Throughout the semester we will trace a broad range of urgent, seemingly novel governance problems back towards their roots for the purpose of charting potential paths forward. We will take a long view on questions of technology policy, looking for the limitations and opportunities confronting both regulators and private-sector decision makers – and the users of these technologies.