In this chapter, I show how the current shift to digitalising tax administration in Kenya is connected to its colonial fiscal structures both in its design and implementation. Firstly, the idea that technology can help economic development in countries like Kenya has existed since colonial times and still features in current policies that endorse technology for economic development. Secondly, colonial structures are also present in the implementation strategies of a digital platform like the e-filing system central in this case study as they rely on colonial infrastructures for implementation. ITax, the e-filing system that is the focus of this chapter, was implemented quite rapidly and made mandatory within a short period. This chapter argues that the ‘promise’ of digitalisation as a driver of sustainability, modernisation, and economic growth is outweighed by the harm done by colonial history impacting its practice. I argue that colonial fiscal policies are still shaping Kenya’s tax practices. A closer look at Kenya’s colonial fiscal history is important for understanding how the current tax systems are shaped and informed by past practices.

As legal design, technology, and innovation initiatives proliferate, more academic institutions are developing and launching certificates, concentrations, and full-fledged degree programs focused on legal innovation, design, and related subjects. Parallel to that promising development are the increased calls for the professionalization of legal design. This chapter posits that adopting a guild mentality toward legal design would unwisely curtail the rapid proliferation of this interdisciplinary movement, resulting in fewer practitioners and far less impact in both the short and long term. It proposes instead the embrace of an expansive identification of who is a “legal designer”: any creative soul with an interest in improving our justice system.

Four themes characterize the role of the Pacific’s newly made navies in the making of the US “New Navy.” Demand for new and surplus technology accelerated innovation. Testing and battlefield observation of novel weapons helped refine decisions about acquisitions and strategy. Threat perceptions of ascendant newly made navies in the Pacific made manifest the immediate need for a US New Navy. And, finally, threat perceptions were instrumentalized as political capital in order to sell the utility of navalism to a skeptical public. Appreciating these relationships textures accounts of the emergence of the US empire in the Pacific, the study of military history in the context of international society, and the advent of prototypically “modern” navies. In this the history of the nineteenth-century Pacific is a useful primer for competition in the region between the People’s Republic of China and the United States.

This chapter reviews the leading explanations for the creation of the US “New Navy” and then proposes the book’s core argument: that US naval expansion in the 1880s and 1890s was disproportionately a reaction to the Pacific’s navies and their wars. In a regional context, the US New Navy was one among many newly made, industrial fleets racing for security and prestige. The Introduction then explains the implications of this thesis for historical accounts of the “Pacific World,” US Empire, and military technological development. It concludes with a chapter outline of the book.

Proposition 67 of Spinoza’s hyper-rationalistic Ethics proudly proclaims that: “A free man thinks of nothing less than of death.” Well, in this book I have thought a great deal about existential death, and a good bit about the “noth-ing of the nothing” that such death discloses. Still, I have probably thought of noth-ing less than of death, so Spinoza might have to count me “free” on a technicality. There are, at any rate, worse things than being freed on a technicality. One can be convicted on a technicality, for example, or even convicted by technicality. Indeed, the later Heidegger suggests that we have all been convicted by technicality, technicity, or technologicity, that is, by “the essence of technology.” According to his view of our late modern age of technological enframing, we have all been thrown by Western history into the prison city-state (or polis) of nihilistic technologicity.

The words ‘nature’ and ‘environment’ have different senses and referents. The idea of the environment is keyed to what surrounds us, and we can speak of natural and built environments as well as others. This book is concerned with ethical questions about the environment. Many of these concern problems that occur at different scales and cause harms of various types. Environmental problems can be viewed from technological, economic, religious, and aesthetic perspectives, among others. No single perspective provides the sole correct or exhaustive way of viewing environmental problems. There is an ethical dimension to most environmental problems and that is the focus of this book.

The Conclusion provides a very brief recap of the issues discussed in the preceding chapters. It reflects on the larger context of regulatory change, and touches upon contemporary challenges of regulation such as the role of gender, race, sustainability, and future generations in the regulatory process.

This chapter offers an introduction to the book. It defines regulation, distinguishing it from other concepts such as governance. We define regulation as ‘intentional, organised attempts to manage or control risk or the behaviours of a different party through the exercise of authority, usually through the use of mechanisms of standard-setting, monitoring and information-gathering and behaviour modification to address a collective tension or problem’. The Introduction reflects upon the most important changes in regulation in the last two decades and the growing relevance of regulation in society. The chapter explains significant changes in the practice and context of regulation that have occurred since the first editions was published.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is presented as a portal to more liberative realities, but its broad implications for society and certain groups in particular require more critical examination. This chapter takes a specifically Black theological perspective to consider the scepticism within Black communities around narrow applications of AI as well as the more speculative ideas about these technologies, for example general AI. Black theology’s perpetual push towards Black liberation, combined with womanism’s invitation to participate in processes that reconstitute Black quality of life, have perfectly situated Black theological thought for discourse around artificial intelligence. Moreover, there are four particular categories where Black theologians and religious scholars have already broken ground and might be helpful to religious discourse concerning Blackness and AI. Those areas are: white supremacy, surveillance and policing, consciousness and God. This chapter encounters several scholars and perspectives within the field of Black theology and points to potential avenues for future theological areas of concern and exploration.

This chapter concludes the book and considers its major theoretical and practical implications. It begins by exploring how the book pushes us to think about fake news and factual misperceptions as an important “layer” of war – a layer that has been largely neglected despite the burgeoning attention to these issues in other domains. This final chapter then examines what the book’s findings tell us about such topics as the psychology and behavior of civilian populations, the duration of armed conflicts, the feasibility of prevailing counterinsurgency models, and the depths and limits of misperceptions more broadly in social and political life. It also engages with the practical implications of the book for policymakers, journalists, activists, and ordinary politically engaged citizens in greater depth, exploring how the problems outlined in the research might also be their own solutions. Ultimately, this chapter shows how the book has something to offer to anyone who is interested in the dynamics of truth and falsehood in violent conflicts (and beyond) – and perhaps the beginnings of a framework for those who would like to cultivate more truth.

This chapter explains what has been meant by energy security in different periods and research contexts. It elaborates on the history of energy security research and creates a typology of internal and external dimensions of energy security. Subsequently, the chapter describes the research on the geopolitics of energy, focusing on the geopolitics of renewable energy and the different implications envisaged to unfold from the energy transition. The chapter ends with a brief summary of the EU’s approach to energy security. The chapter, thereby, creates a research context for the empirical analyses conducted in this book.

This chapter discusses the use of virtual approaches to data collection in qualitative research in the age of Covid-19. Covid-19, also known as SARS-CoV-2, came to public attention on December 1, 2019, and was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization on March 11, 2020. Due to safety considerations, Covid-19 necessitated the move from in-person approaches to virtual approaches for qualitative researchers, most of whom likely lack specific training and knowledge on Internet-mediated approaches with data collection. To provide background information and perspective on virtual interviewing, the chapter offers a primer by overviewing virtual interviewing, examining researcher and participant perspectives, and offering best-practice considerations when managing the technical aspects, participant engagement, and ethical considerations of virtual interviewing.