Information & Algorithmic Governance: assignments

INFORMATION AND ALGORITHMIC GOVERNANCE: SPRING 2026 ASSIGNMENTS

Information & Algorithmic Governance, Spring 2026

Professor Ira Steven Nathenson

Stetson University College of Law

Email: inathenson@law.stetson.edu
Phone: (727) 562-7681
Homepage: https://www.nathenson.org/
Course website: https://nathenson.org/courses/algorithms
Assignments: https://www.nathenson.org/courses/algorithms/assignments
Class time: Mon. & Wed., 10:00 am – 11:50 am, online (zoom). The Zoom link will be sent via email to registered students several days prior to the first class. If you are a late enrollee to the course, please email me to obtain the link.
Office hours: Normally any time after class, and by request or appointment. All office hours will be online (via Zoom or MS Teams).

ABOUT THIS COURSE

The reign of law as we have known it may be coming to an end, or at the very least, to a major transformation. Emerging technologies and forms of information—black-box algorithms, LLMs with de facto agency, realistic deepfakes, algorithmic content-filtering, biometric identification, information mining, the consolidation of media power, and much more—may require us to ask whether law’s traditional regulatory and normative functions are being supplanted, if not displaced, by new forms of information and algorithmic governance. This course will challenge students to consider what law is as well as what it may become.

REQUIRED BOOKS

  1. Many of the course materials will be accessible through resources such as Westlaw, Hein Online, and JSTOR, all of which are associated with your law school account.
  2. Other course materials will be available through the internet or through this website.
  3. Finally, some materials will be available through online vendors such as the Amazon bookstore or other sellers. I will give advance notice regarding any such materials so that you have ample opportunity to obtain the materials via library (lend or loan), digital purchase, or bookstore acquisition.

WEEK 1

Mon., Jan. 19 (MLK Day) 

  • MLK Day, no class

WEEK 2

Mon., Jan. 26 (class 1): Is Law Dead?

Please read the materials below with the following question in mind: Is law dead?

Class is on Zoom; login information was sent via email. Please contact me directly at inathenson at law dot stetson dot edu if you are a late registrant and did not receive the email.

WEEK 3

Mon., Feb. 2 (class 2): Algorithms as Law

  • Approximately half of today’s class will be spend discussing the readings, and the other half addressing project management.
  • Readings:
  • Project-related:
    • In our prior class, we discussed the kinds of projects that you are free to do for this course. As noted, you will be doing one or two projects (depending on scope) and presenting later in the semester on your work.
    • This is not a seminar class, and there is no expectation of a formal seminar paper; however, your goal is to prepare a useful or informative digital object (whether a perpetual object or a group of related objects).
    • We’ll further discuss the mechanics of this today; please send your suggestions for projects, topics, and readings by this coming Sunday (Feb. 8, below).

WEEK 4

Sun., Feb. 8 (assignment): Please post to discussion boards by EOD (end-of-day)

  1. At least three (3) topics you might be interested in doing as projects.
  2. At least two (2) suggestions for class discussion topics.
  3. At least two (2) potential readings. Please include working links. The readings can be anything available on open internet, SSRN.COM, databases available to the College of Law community (ex., Westlaw, Hein, JSTOR), or available via online purchase at reasonable cost (such as Amazon).

Mon., Feb. 9 (class 3): Code and Law in the Dual State

Our main readings will be from/touching upon Ernst Fraenkel and Lawrence Lessig. There will also be some supportive readings. Plan on spending about half of our next class on the readings and half on the projects. As we’ve done so far, use the topic title as a clue, a thought-provoking question (TPQ) that guides your readings and thoughts. You’re probably finding that our discussion of the readings dances around the issues provoked by thinking about the named topic. Read each week’s materials with the week’s topic in mind (as well as in light of previous topics). In an era of disruption, we may not always be able to find answers, but we can search for them by phrasing good questions. The core function of a good lawyer is developing and exercising good judgment in the face of uncertainty.

WEEK 5

Mon., Feb. 16 (class 4): Digital Due Process, or, The Medium is the Master

This assignment was previously distributed via email.

  • Projects. Comments have been posted to everyone’s proposals. Go to the discussion board for details. Please consider which project you would like to pursue for Monday.
  • Readings.
    • Read this paper by Frederick Mostert on digital due process. It was published in JILP (Journal of IP Law) in 2020. If you need to create an account to download, you may do so for free.
    • Read The Medium is the Master, edited transcript of a chat between Professor Nathenson and Lucian, a Copilot AI. This document was emailed to your Stetson account.

Friday, Feb. 20: Please post project selections by EOB

Reminder: please post your chosen topics to the pertinent Canvas discussion board by EOB Friday. Further details can be found at the Canvas page.

WEEK 6

Mon., Feb. 23 (class 5): Technofeudalism, or, Has the Algorithm Killed Capitalism?

WEEK 7

Mon., Mar. 2 (class 6): You Tell Me What Today’s Class is About

  • Check your Stetson email for the assigned materials and links.
  • Today’s discussion will be based on a chat between me and a Gemini Pro AI (Google) as embodied on a formatted PDF. The PDF is included in the email distributed.
  • You will also work with a NotebookLM (also Google) notebook. The link and more detailed technical instructions are included in the email. Please do not share the link.
  • What to do with these materials.
    • Pay careful attention to my instructions in the email.
    • Read the PDF.
    • On NotebookLM, read the chat box first. You can also chat (middle box) with the AI about the PDF, and you can additionally create items in the Studio (right box). Addendum: for Mac users, you should probably use a browser other than Safari, which has a long-known bug that may cause a page to jump to the top every time it’s refreshed. I successfully used Edge on the Mac without this problem; no doubt many of you are already aware of this.
    • Come to class with 2-3 questions to ask the AI. Feel free to be provocative and to challenge any of the assumptions in the PDF or in any of the other materials.
    • Your chatting cannot be seen by me or others, but Studio creations (slides, infographics, podcasts) can be seen by me and, I believe, the rest of the group.
    • When creating Studio items, don’t just blindly click on a button. Click the edit (pencil) and design your own Studio items. If possible, rename them so we know who created what.
    • Most importantly, have fun. I strongly believe that in a new technological environment, the best way to learn is to play, to test boundaries, and to consider legal and societal implications of these tools.

WEEK 8

Mon., Mar. 9 (class 7): Accelerationism

In addition to reading the readings, turn them into digital artifacts that you can engage with using one or more AI tools such as Copilot EDP, Gemini/NotebookLM, or ChatGPT. Vary the settings (Fast, Thinking, etc.) and engage with the materials, using the AIs as guides.

Every person should come to class with at least two (2) questions to ask each other and an AI during class. And yes, you may use AI to help you come up with questions for the AI; this will help you develop your prompting skills.

Other potentially useful or interesting stuff brought up during class by group members (thank you!). Not assigned, but stuff you might want to tinker with or use to learn from. I’m not familiar with all of these but they may be worth exploring. Thank you to those who made these suggestions (not posting names here for privacy purposes).

MIT’s books on AI (requires Google Docs)

Github – prompt engineering tutorial. Will require tinkering, also see link on Welcome page for access to a Google Docs link, which appears to require an Anthropic API.

Moltbook, a Reddit-like social news site for AIs only.

Other tools:

WEEK 9: SPRING BREAK

WEEK 10

Sun., Mar. 22: Online availability.

1PM – I will again be online to give any guidance or to address any questions. Zoom link via email.

Mon., Mar. 23 (class 8): Project Vaults and Reality Workshop.

We will spend the entire class reviewing and crowdsourcing each member’s progress. We’ll also learn techniques of creating a clean, organized, and centralized workflow. Be prepared to share screens and spend about five (5) minutes sharing with us what you’re doing and where you’re at. We will also select dates for your project presentations, which will take place in the final three weeks of class. Please be ready to share your presentation-date preferences (first, second, third), as Lucian has generated an algorithm that will attempt to give as many people their preferences as possible. Whatever date(s) you choose will have no reflection on your score–earlier or later are all fine–and my recommendation is instead that you propose dates based not on when you think your project will be complete (I rather doubt that many projects will be “complete” in a publication sense even at semester’s end as these projects are open-ended explorations), but instead based on when you think you will benefit most from crowdsourced feedback.

WEEK 11

Mon., Mar. 30 (class 9): Death of the Author: Innovation in an Era of Information Abundance.

If you missed last week’s class, you are still responsible for viewing the video with training on how to use Obsidian for keeping track of your AI chats in persistent, taggable, searchable form. Obsidian is free, please see the emails I sent on the subject last week regarding how to view the video and get Obsidian.

If you were absent last week, I will ask you to spend a few minutes updating everyone on the progress of your project.

Assigned, read or view in the order provided:

Optional, additional stuff for Copyright nerds:

WEEK 12

Mon., Apr. 6 (class 10): Compliance Wars I: Governing the Machine.

You should read the materials in the following order:
~Thurs.-Sat., Apr. 9-11: Individual meetings with Professor over Zoom.

WEEK 13

Mon., Apr. 13 (class 11): Compliance Wars II: Machine as Governance.

Readings:

Presentations:

  • Florida data centers
  • The silent shaper
  • AI image generators, fair use or failed use?
  • AI personas

WEEK 14

Mon., Apr. 20 (class 12): Who Watches the Watchmen?

Reading: Woodrow Harzog, Two AI Truths and a Lie, 26 Yale J.L. & Tech. 595 (2024)

Presentations:

  • The AI rebuttal machine
  • The AI sous chef
  • TikTok takedowns
  • Moltbook–AI Disneyworld?
  • AI as RA

WEEK 15

Mon., Apr. 27 (class 13): What is Law?

WEEK 16

Mon., May 4 (est). Final project submissions due.

I am open to alternative dates. I want members to have at least an additional week after semester’s end to wrap things up, and to account for any final exams.

Last revised Apr. 10, 2026