2 Investments in the Imaginary: Commercial Drone Speculations and Relations
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Anna Jackman
Abstract
Drones are increasingly understood and imagined as important actors, inhabiting and transforming aerial space. From their entrenched establishment within battlefield operations, drones have spawned into a diverse ecosystem of platforms and applications, increasingly punctuating domestic urban airspace. While occupying a status as exemplars of urban innovation, the drone poses, and remains bound to, a range of techno-cultural contestations – from challenges around airspace integration, to concerns around privacy, safety and pollution. Thinking with commercial drone futures, and specifically the logistics sector, this chapter interrogates the role of speculation in this unfolding techno-landscape. In so doing we turn to two key sites through which the drone is anticipated – namely patents and adverts – as lenses through which to investigate projected visualisations underpinning the emergent, envisioned and anticipated drone. We argue that such drone speculations do not simply and solely envision new means of circulating goods, people and information, but rather embody and act to promote a particular set of aerial desires and social relations. Critically unpacking envisioned notions of frictionless mobility, instant consumption, and the appropriation of vertical spaces and spectra, we argue that such speculative sites and practices importantly participate in a techno-fetishist agenda positing drone technology as a privileged and panacea agent of futurity, while often eliding its implications.
Abstract
Drones are increasingly understood and imagined as important actors, inhabiting and transforming aerial space. From their entrenched establishment within battlefield operations, drones have spawned into a diverse ecosystem of platforms and applications, increasingly punctuating domestic urban airspace. While occupying a status as exemplars of urban innovation, the drone poses, and remains bound to, a range of techno-cultural contestations – from challenges around airspace integration, to concerns around privacy, safety and pollution. Thinking with commercial drone futures, and specifically the logistics sector, this chapter interrogates the role of speculation in this unfolding techno-landscape. In so doing we turn to two key sites through which the drone is anticipated – namely patents and adverts – as lenses through which to investigate projected visualisations underpinning the emergent, envisioned and anticipated drone. We argue that such drone speculations do not simply and solely envision new means of circulating goods, people and information, but rather embody and act to promote a particular set of aerial desires and social relations. Critically unpacking envisioned notions of frictionless mobility, instant consumption, and the appropriation of vertical spaces and spectra, we argue that such speculative sites and practices importantly participate in a techno-fetishist agenda positing drone technology as a privileged and panacea agent of futurity, while often eliding its implications.
Chapters in this book
- Front Matter i
- Contents v
- List of Figures vii
- Notes on Contributors viii
- Acknowledgements x
- Introduction 1
-
Scaffolding
- Foreword to Part 1 9
- Speculating with Glitches: Keeping the Future Moving 13
- Investments in the Imaginary: Commercial Drone Speculations and Relations 36
- Dystopias for Discourse: The Role of the Artist in a Rapidly Reconfiguring City 66
- New Images of Thought: On Two Kinds of Speculative Realism 80
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More-than-Human Worlds
- Foreword to Part 2 103
- Speculative Listening: Melting Sea Ice and New Methods of Listening with the Planet 107
- It Matters What Designs Design Designs: Speculations on Multispecies Worlding 125
- Edible Speculations: Designing Everyday Oracles for Food Futures 145
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Speculative Ethics
- Foreword to Part 3 171
- Beyond Speculation: Using Speculative Methods to Surface Ethics and Positionality in Design Practice and Pedagogy 175
- Touring the Carbon Ruins: Towards an Ethics of Speculative Decarbonisation 200
- Science Fiction, Reconfigured Social Theory and the Anthropocene Age: Exploring and Thinking about Planetary Futures through Fictional Imaginaries 224
- The Debate 250
- Index 256
Chapters in this book
- Front Matter i
- Contents v
- List of Figures vii
- Notes on Contributors viii
- Acknowledgements x
- Introduction 1
-
Scaffolding
- Foreword to Part 1 9
- Speculating with Glitches: Keeping the Future Moving 13
- Investments in the Imaginary: Commercial Drone Speculations and Relations 36
- Dystopias for Discourse: The Role of the Artist in a Rapidly Reconfiguring City 66
- New Images of Thought: On Two Kinds of Speculative Realism 80
-
More-than-Human Worlds
- Foreword to Part 2 103
- Speculative Listening: Melting Sea Ice and New Methods of Listening with the Planet 107
- It Matters What Designs Design Designs: Speculations on Multispecies Worlding 125
- Edible Speculations: Designing Everyday Oracles for Food Futures 145
-
Speculative Ethics
- Foreword to Part 3 171
- Beyond Speculation: Using Speculative Methods to Surface Ethics and Positionality in Design Practice and Pedagogy 175
- Touring the Carbon Ruins: Towards an Ethics of Speculative Decarbonisation 200
- Science Fiction, Reconfigured Social Theory and the Anthropocene Age: Exploring and Thinking about Planetary Futures through Fictional Imaginaries 224
- The Debate 250
- Index 256
