Policy fiction : Designing future iot policy

A Policy Fiction is a kind of legal thought experiment that helps study the potential impacts of a technology through an imagined legal scenario. Constructing a Policy Fiction is proposed as a new way to help imagine, indicate, envision and assess how policy for an emerging technology might evolve in the future.

In the policy fiction Mr. and Mrs. Shy v Google I present a collection of photographs, articles, and objects as ‘evidence.’ When ‘pieced together, the evidence asks the audience to consider the legal, political, ethical, economic, and socio-cultural implications of a world in which Trusted IoT Labels are widely used but weakly regulated. By doing so I question the dissonance between calls for future IoT labels and the socio-legal complexities of implementing such a label. What policies might develop in a world where trusted IoT labels are widely used? Constructing a Policy Fiction can help imagine, indicate, envision, and assess how policy for an emerging technology might evolve in the future.

The proceedings of a mock trial played out with twenty-two lawyers, policymakers and designers are presented with fictional newspaper articles and courtroom sketches that capture the key arguments from both sides. When imagined as a set of courtroom sketches and fictional newspaper articles, the ideas generated from the enacted ‘thought experiment’ presents a compelling meditation in the blurring of boundaries between law, fiction and technology. The construction of fictional legal documents brings together the socio-cultural and ‘felt-life’ aspects of privacy such as the need for seclusions and medical effects caused by a breach of privacy.