----- Forwarded message from Cleve Higgins <fchiggins@gmail.com> -----

From: Cleve Higgins <fchiggins@gmail.com>

Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2012 15:54:31 -0500

To: drone-list@lists.stanford.edu

Subject: [drone-list] intro, and some thoughts

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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----- End forwarded message -----

--

Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org

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ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org