Investments in the imaginary: commercial drone speculations and relations

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 article 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.<br /><br />Key messages<br /><ul><li>Drones are increasingly understood and imagined as important actors, inhabiting and transforming urban airspace.</li><br /><li>Interrogating the domestic drone, we offer a critical visual analysis of key sites through which it is speculated.</li><br /><li>While envisioning convenience from the air, commercial drone speculations also embody and promote particular aerial desires.</li><br /><li>We argue that staying with speculation enables the critical unpacking of notions of frictionless mobility, instant consumption and the appropriation of vertical space.</li></ul>

‘Everyday droning’: Towards a feminist geopolitics of the drone-home

“…In what follows, we thus focus on alternative and under-accounted for drone mobilisations through engaging diverse non-state actors who are (speculatively) designing, commercially marketing and/or living with drones-at-home in the Global North. Here, we recognise that the age of readily accessible consumer drones ushers in a range of under-accounted everyday droning practices and harms (Jackman, 2019), those which both raise questions of privilege (Jackman and Jablonowski, 2021) and are variously gendered (Thomasen, 2018) and racialised (Allinson, 2015). In the telling of further and 'contradictory drone stories' (Jablonowski, 2015: 13), we thus turn to feminist geopolitics to interrogate the home's vertical airspace and its horizontal axis.…”

“…The drone stands poised as a technology of expansionism to do just this. Alongside the drone 'existing, taking to the skies everyday', it is also increasingly speculated (Jackman and Jablonowski, 2021;Rothstein, 2015). For example, reports issued by commercial outfits paint a picture of (future) 'life more automated' to describe and illustrate the prospect of 'multidrone households', those populated by affordable (micro-)drones tasked with a growing range of household assistance and aid (Comparethemarket.com, 2020: n.p.…”

“…This example is of course one facet of a wider phenomenon, with domestic(ated) drones increasingly anticipated and imagined across diverse forms of popular culture, media, and commercial artefacts (Basotia, 2020;Graae, 2020;Jackman and Jablonowski, 2021). Following Van Veeren's (2013: n.p.)…”

Forging volumetric methods

“…Drones have emerged as increasingly popular devices for a growing number of state and non‐state actors (Bradley & Cerella, 2019; Jackman, 2017; Jackman & Jablonoski, 2021; Klauser & Pedrozo, 2015; Millner, 2020). Similarly, given their capacities to collect imagery and data, drone methodologies are increasingly prevalent (Birtchnell & Gibson, 2015; Fish et al, 2017; Garrett & Anderson, 2018; Garrett & McCosker, 2017).…”

Introduction to Special Issue: Staying with Speculation: Natures, Futures, Politics

“…Joe Deville's (Deville, 2021) response to Shawn Bodden and Jen Ross's 'Speculating with Glitches: Keeping the Future Moving' (Bodden & Ross, 2021) brings the idea of 'glitches' right up to date, with a discussion on Covid-19 as a 'glitch' in the system, but which system: the tightly coupled global systems or the modern word built upon human-centred systems. Paul Cureton (Cureton, 2021) in his reply to Anna Jackman and Maximillian Jablonowski's 'Investment in the Imaginary' (Jackman & Jablonowski, 2021), continues the discussion of technology and its place or not, in building a better future. To 'build back better' we need to shift our collective critical capabilities to speculating on what kind of relationship we want to have on a personal, communal and planetarian scale.…”