The Coffee Bank and the Speed of Change

Technology consistently outpaces the legal and regulatory frameworks designed to govern it. Innovations begin as conveniences but can fundamentally alter established norms and rules. Starbucks, for instance, inadvertently became a financial institution by requiring customers to preload funds for app purchases, accumulating billions in customer balances without a banking license. This illustrates how design choices, rather than outright rebellion, can create regulatory blind spots. Uber pioneered a model of launching first, operating in a legal grey area, and then leveraging widespread adoption to legitimize its existence. This "move fast, let the system adapt" approach has become a pervasive strategy in the tech economy. OpenAI's Sora model, capable of generating video from text, raises questions about copyright as it learned from existing human-created works without explicit permission or compensation. Current copyright law, designed for physical copying, struggles to address AI's ability to ingest vast amounts of creative content. The speed of technological iteration, measured in days, far exceeds the deliberation of regulators, who operate on yearly timelines. This gap means laws often describe existing actions rather than defining what is possible. While formal oversight lags, informal mechanisms like reputation and public trust attempt to fill the void, though they are more fragile. Ultimately, progress should not erase the people it relies upon, and while innovation may not seek permission, it should arguably still seek consent.