The false logic of technological optimism in law

The logic of 'Technological Optimism' has become a pervasive conceptual mindset in law and technology discourse. It disproportionately protects practical or economic efficiency, creating an inflated loss aversion towards regulatory friction, whilst framing technology as a 'neutral tool', excessively linking blameworthiness for any negative consequences to human action. This encumbers the regulatory process by misbalancing innovation over risk, whilst causally disassociating technology from the normative frameworks that structure the law. This paper, therefore, proposes an alternative conceptual mindset for legal epistemes, as an 'Experiential Perspective', based on three central modalities of: multidimensionality, nonduality and nondeterminism. To demonstrate its normative worth, this paper identifies three legal developments-protection against revenge pornography, the right to be forgotten and the nascent right to be offline-that represent a conceptual shift away from Technological Optimism and towards an Experiential Perspective, consequently capturing the deeper dimensions of technological transformation. This is an original manuscript of an article published by Taylor and Francis in the Law, Innovation and Technology Journal on 30 July 2026, available at https://doi.org/10.1080/17579961.2026.2705129