Communication and Technology

-- By MichaelPanfil - 27 Feb 2009

Individuals are, at least in part, a product of their environment. This assertion is not meant to begin an argument in the realm of nature versus nurture, but rather to provide a relatively well-accepted foundational assumption to act as a beginning point. The referenced environment is in no way static – time and place change experience in a broad fashion, and individual family, community, and professional norms further specify an individual’s particular experience. These differences and movements are impacted in no small part through technological advances – inventions that bridge communities such as the car, the telephone, or the Internet have had an expansive influence upon individual environments. It is this impact that is at issue in this paper, with respect to one particular type of vocation – the legal professional. This essay examines the rapid expansion of technology and communication that have necessarily changed the framework and underlying understanding of how legal professionals approach legal problems.

Definitions

Before proceeding to the argument, it may be helpful to provide definitions for a few terms used. First, when the word ‘thought’ is used, the reference made is not only to a logical or philosophical system, but rather refers to mental processes but conscious and unconscious. Secondly, the term legal professional is not constricted to only those who have, through law school, become judges or lawyers. Rather, this term is meant to refer to any individual engaged in rule or regulation creation or discussion. Lastly, the term communication references all types of interaction, including written, spoken, and unspoken exchanges of ideas.

Lawyers within communities

Oliver Wendell Holmes, in the Path of Law describes the study of law as the study of what we (we being legal professionals) do. Lawyers then, like some Nietzsche-esque bird of prey are described by the act of doing, the verb without need of the noun, the underlying action guided not by a moral mandate but by a societal driven system of norms and guidelines. Equally important, however, is the group described – that is, legal professionals. The inclusive ‘we’ defines a community, which is narrowed not only be profession, but also by location and time. What ‘we’ as legal professionals ‘do’ is different from what ‘other’ legal professionals ‘do’. A lawyer’s underlying thought process in Louisiana is quite different than a legal professional’s mental and subconscious calculus in Rwanda. So long as every community is not the same (which seems to be a safe assumption), it thus follows that legal professionals in different communities understand law differently.

Language, thought, and causality

There is no true consensus as to how understanding (and from that, thought) operates. Traditionally, rational thought and logic were placed at a beginning point, which in turn led to communication, and from that, the transmission of one individual’s logic to another. Although several flaws can be found in this view, it is the assumed causality that is of particular importance here. Thought leading to communication was, for quite some time assumed automatically. However, as argued best by Lev Vygotsky, in Thought and Language, the true causal connection is quite possibly the opposite – that is, communication creates thought. Vygotsky argues then, that instead of thought creating the way communication occurs, communication impacts the way one thinks. This occurs at a subconscious level – the way one examines the world, and internalizes the external forces into a particular perception is done through an internalization of communication. This internalization of particular communications in turn drives thought, so that the process by which one understands his surroundings is impacted by the way he utilizes language.

Technology and communication

Taken together, the arguments made by Holmes and Vygotsky have significant ramifications for how legal professionals operate. Legal decisions, made on the basis of what one ‘does’ rather than what one ‘says’, creates communication understood and unconsciously internalized by legal professionals in that particular community. However, as mentioned previously, communities are impacted and expanded by technology. If the way ideas are transmitted itself influences how ideas are internalized, every particular legal professional in a certain community not only ‘thinks’ differently than that community at large, she ‘thinks’ differently then legal professionals in different communities.

Implications

What is the impact, then, upon legal professionals in light of recent technological advances? Current expansions in communication (namely, the barriers lowered by way of the Internet) have given rise to increased communication between communities. A law student in Indiana can find (with a bit of research) decisions passed down French courts. Law students in New York can converse with counterparts in Tokyo. Legal institutions are expanding internationally at an increasing pace. These changes, if Vygotsky and Holmes are correct, necessarily change how legal professionals think. This change is not conscious in nature – the locus of effected thought isn’t to be found through the logic exchanged. Whether or not the logic expressed in communication is accepted, denied, or outwardly disregarded is not at issue. Rather, it is the fact that such an exchange occurs – increased communication between communities is in itself a shifting force that necessarily alters the thought process by which law is understood and practiced.

Conclusion

It is important to distinguish between what this essay asserts and does not assert. It does not pretend to make a normative claim. Technology’s influence upon the legal profession is not judged to be ‘good’ or ‘bad’, but merely as an occurrence. This work likewise does not only assert that the legal profession is changing because of the Internet. This statement is rather plain enough in itself, and needs little explication. Rather, this work attempts to examine a way in which recent technological advances have influenced, and will continue to impact, the legal community. These advances have changed the scope of communication, and in doing so, have given rise to greater instances of communications between different communities. This increase in exposure in turn effects thought at a subconscious level, creating an altered framework from which legal professionals act.

Word Count: 980

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