[drone-list] intro, and some thoughts

[Cleve Higgins]

Heyo all,

I have been reading a lot about the role of drone technology in military,
surveillance, and law enforcement, and the thinking about the ways in which
it is part of a larger blurring of these domains (especially in the US).
I'm based in Montreal, a city in the business of aeronautics, and also
computer simulation, and drones have become an important aspect of both of
these industries in recent years. My research has focused on these local
connections, especially when they're related to the universities. Finally,
I'm intrigued by use of drones by social movements for counter-surveillance
purposes (such as the occucopter), as well as emerging examples of hacking
drone communications and control systems.

I'm glad to hear that people other than security and military agencies have
been finding positive uses for drones (such as the humanitarian uses that
have been mentioned already). Though I have skeptical thoughts on
increasing media attention on this side of the drone story. Does it risk
having the role (intentional or not) of glossing over or mitigating the
rapidly emerging new forms of war\repression being carried out by the US
government? And specifically the brutal effects this is having in northern
Pakistan? This is not to say that these problems are being completely
ignored - the critical stories are being written, and that is good. Though
I also suspect that an effect of the surge of these critical stories is
that the US government is trying to come up with ways to defend and
legitimize their actions, and one way to do that could be to emphasize (and
even support) the "dual-use" aspects of drone technology.

I see this in the context of the myth of inevitable, unilinear
technological (and social) progress, and how it downplays the important
role that military funding and direction has in technological developments
in countries such as the US. Many technologies exist in the form they do
because of their military applications. If not for this military support,
it is very possible that the technologies would not exist at all, or at
least not in the form that they do. Innumerable social choices are made
that shape our world, including our technology, and it is always possible
that different choices could have been made (about how much of our
collective social effort we put into military and security areas, for
example). An important aspect of this perspective is that technologies are
very connected to the social relations and values of the contexts in which
they emerge. I think the development of ARPANET by the US military as a
means of better surviving nuclear attack is an example of this, but that's
a whole other discussion. I haven't thought much yet about the context for
the emergence of drones, and I don't want this email to get much longer
than it already is by attempting to do so now, but for starters think it
would be related to the "war on terror", asymmetrical warfare, and the
contradictions of the (declining) US empire as the only military superpower
(attempting military solutions to "policing" problems). I look forward to
hearing anyone's thoughts on these topics.

Thanks for creating this list! Sorry if this first email is somewhat long
and tangential. Mostly I plan on using this list to share articles as I
find them, with brief thoughts sometimes. More in-depth or contentious
discussion is sometimes good though. adelante,

Cleve
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