Media Law Through Science Fiction: Do Androids Dream of Electric Free Speech?

Science fiction offers us plausible future worlds as a laboratory in which we can study human nature and thus many of the challenges media law scholars and policy makers will face in the future may have already been explored by science fiction writers. This book is an attempt to look at the future of communication technology and the policy debates ahead--to lay the groundwork for the laws and regulations and judicial decisions to come. What is the traditional role of science fiction, and how has it fit into cultural understanding and policy debates in the past? What is the traditional role of law and policy scholarship, and how can it be adjusted to be more meaningful in debates about use and limitations involving future technology? Relying on some of the masters of science fiction, Daxton Stewart here examines these questions and more.