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12 Ave Maria L. Rev. 173 (2014)
Systems of Evidence in the Age of Complexity

handle is hein.journals/avemar12 and id is 187 raw text is: SYSTEMS OF EVIDENCE IN THE AGE OF
COMPLEXITY
George L. Pault
The global economy is transforming in unprecedented fashion.
Persistent, exponentially advancing technologies1 now rival the invention
of the printing press in their importance to society.2 Indeed, respected
economists declare that what is happening is the biggest development in the
history of economic activity.3         The result?      Complex systems will soon
define reality and a new civilization is emerging. And what is happening in
the legal realm? Our system of evidence now fails to comprehend the
emerging complexity that may soon overwhelm us. Accordingly, the rule
of law is in jeopardy.
f   George L. Paul, a graduate of Yale Law School and Dartmouth College, is a trial lawyer of
thirty-two years experience. He has written FOUNDATIONS OF DIGITAL EVIDENCE (2008), Information
Inflation: Can the Legal System Adapt, and other books and articles about digital evidence issues.
1. See George L. Paul. Transformation, 9 ABA SCITECH LAWYER, Winter/Spring 2013, at 2,
available at www.lrrlaw.com/files/uploads/documents/Transformation,%20by%20George%2OPaul.pdf
(quoting Daniel Burrus' statements that exponential hard trends are transforming society in a way that is
bigger than the... printing press).
2. It is widely acknowledged that the invention of the moveable type printing press by Johannes
Gutenberg, circa 1450 C.E., was the technology that more than any other helped usher in modernity. Its
acceleration of the transmission of information enabled such things as the Renaissance, the Protestant
Reformation, and the Scientific Revolution. Before Gutenberg's invention it took many months to make a
single book, but after the printing press, people were able to print about 300 pages a day, with the rate up
to 1,000 pages a day at the end of the Fifteenth Century. See Carlo M. Cipolla, BEFORE THE INDUSTRIAL
REVOLUTION: EUROPEAN SOCIETY AND ECONOMY 1000-1700, at 106 (Christopher Woodall, trans., 3d
ed. 1994). Because of the importance of his invention, Gutenberg has been proclaimed the most important
person of the last millennium. See AGNES HOOPER GOTTLIEB, ET AL., 1000 YEARS, 1000 PEOPLE:
RANKING THE MEN AND WOMEN WHO SHAPED THE MILLENNIUM (1998). Others state Gutenberg is one
of the most influential people in   human   history.  See Johannes Gutenberg, WIKIPEDIA,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes-Gutenberg (last visited Apr. 12, 2014) (further asserting that
Gutenberg's invention stimulated the Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution).
3.  The current changes are not only the biggest since the Industrial Revolution, they may well be
the biggest changes ever in the history of our economy. See W. Brian Arthur, The Second Economy,
McKNSEY Q. (Oct. 2001), http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/strategy/thesecond-economy.

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