Embedded governance in technology and the development of the smart grid

What does it mean to embed governance in technology? In short it refers to the ability to transpose the criteria or characteristics of standards, understandings, rules, laws, policy and even design constraints into technical components or systems. The resulting technology and accompanying governance is driven by either directly including those criteria and characteristics in the technologies or by excluding them. It is this constructive nature of technology which in turn imposes norms on society by defining how people can interact with the technology and by defining how the technology should be built and deployed. Essentially those criteria and characteristics become the code by which the technology becomes developed and the regulations which permit its use. Lawrence Lessig would explain this use of regulation as “One that focuses on more than the single influence of any one force such as government, norms or the market, and instead integrates these factors into a single account” [1]. When looking at the embedded governance of technology it is easy to see how Lessig´s idea could be applicable to technologies as well.