What Makes a Drone “Good”? with Beryl Pong

In this episode, we talk to Beryl Pong, UKRI Future Leaders Fellow at the University of Cambridge, where she leads the Centre for Drones and Culture. Beryl reflects on what it means to think about drones as “good” or “ethical” technologies and how it can be assessed through its socio-political context. Beryl examines the dual nature of drones, looking at both their humanitarian uses and the ethical implications of their deployment in civilian life. The discussion also touches on the aesthetics of drones and their representation in popular culture, concluding with a reflection on drone light shows as a new form of cultural expression.

Beryl Pong is a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow at the Centre for the Future of Intelligence at the University of Cambridge, where she leads the Centre for Drones and Culture and the project Droned Life: Data, Narrative, and the Aesthetics of Worldmaking. Trained in English literature and cultural studies, her work examines drones through aesthetics and culture, exploring how the form and affordances of technologies shape political power, ethics, and everyday life. She treats technology as something that can be closely read and analysed, drawing on methods from literary criticism to think about ethics and more socially just uses of technology.

Reading list:

• Nicholas Mirzoeff, 'White Sight: Visual Politics and Practices of Whiteness': https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262047678/white-sight/

• Beryl Pong, 'The Art of Drone Warfare'. Journal of War & Culture Studies, 15(4), 377–387.: https://doi.org/10.1080/17526272.2022.2121257

• Beryl Pong, British Literature and Culture in Second World Wartime: For the Duration:

https://global.oup.com/academic/product/british-literature-and-culture-in-second-world-wartime-9780198840923?cc=gb&lang=en& 

• Winner, Langdon (1980). 'Do artifacts have politics?' Daedalus 109 (1):121—136.: https://philpapers.org/rec/WINDAH-3 

Transcript:

Kerry McInerney (00:58)

In this episode, we talk to Beryl Pong, head of the Center for Drones and Culture at the Leverhulme Center for the Future of Intelligence. We discuss how Beryl's background in literature and cultural studies helps her read and understand technologies like drones. We talk about what a drone is, whether or not they can be good drones, and how this differs from the political project of Drones for Good. We also explore together what we learn by thinking about drones through the lens of aesthetic and culture.

the problems that arise from using drones in different humanitarian settings, the perils of deploying military technologies like drones into the civilian sphere, and finally, how drones are being integrated into popular culture through their use in film, TV, and unique cultural productions like drone light shows. We hope you enjoy the episode.

Kerry McInerney (01:42)

Thank you so much for joining us here today, it's a real pleasure to have you. To kick us off, could you tell us a little bit about who you are, what you do, and what brings you to thinking about gender, feminism, and technology?

Beryl Pong (01:54)

Thanks very much for having me. I'm a fan of your podcast, so it's an honor to be here. I'm an academic, I'm a researcher. I'm currently funded by UK Research and Innovation as a Future Leaders Fellow to tackle a big project about drone ethics and its relationship to drone aesthetics. As part of that project, I established and I run what's called the Centre for Drones and Culture. It's based at the University of Cambridge and it brings together a community of cross-disciplinary researchers, including politics, digital media, computer sciences, to think about how drones are impacting on different facets of everyday life and society.

My own background is in English literature and visual culture and cultural studies. Sometimes this does seem far out from what I'm currently researching and working on. But I've always been interested in matters of form. In literary criticism we speak the relationship between the form of an object or the form of a text or of writing, the relationship to content, what it's trying to convey, the meanings that it's expressing. Increasingly I've been thinking about how form and content in technology could complement or be in tension with each other. This motivates my understanding of technology from the angle of finding more socially just expressions and uses for it. That might be the link to feminism.

Eleanor Drage (03:12)

You see listeners, literature is a transferable skill. It's a great degree.

Beryl Pong (03:16)

I know. It's quite provocative. I did a while back have an argument somewhere saying that it is a formal take on technology. We usually think of texts and writing as close reading. What if we treated technology itself as something that needed to be closely read? What about its nuances? Who's reading it? How is it being read? Where is it being produced, published, being disseminated. If we can learn to engage with it as if it is accessible to us, like reading, maybe we can have better relationships with its ethics.

Eleanor Drage (03:53)

That's a perfect segue into big robot questions. What is good technology? Is it even possible? How can feminism help us get there? Perhaps a good technology is one that can be closely read and interpreted. What do you think?

Beryl Pong (04:06)

That would be a way to start.

We tend to have ready ideas about dystopian visions for what we don't want in technology. But we're not very good at embracing or being vulnerable about what we think is desirable and hopeful and worth reaching for. Instead of repeating the truism that technologies are neither good nor bad, it's only about how you use them, I've been thinking about this question in terms of how we can assess for ourselves in context specific scenarios whether a technology might be good or bad.

I'll lean on an old article from Langdon Winner. It's called Do Artifacts Have Politics? He points out that scientific knowledge, technological innovation, and corporate motivations and profit reinforce each other. They can do so in deeply entrenched patterns that then bear the stamp of political and economic power.

He suggests that political effects of many new technologies depend on the broader political regimes into which they are born or imagined or inserted, and that new technologies become meaningful and are captured by these regimes that the tech then comes to reproduce. From my perspective, to start thinking about what is good technology, we need to think about the affordance of the technology: how it's designed, its material properties, its capabilities, how these encourage particular uses and interactions. That's not neutral.

Second, we need to think about the contours of the socio-political regimes in which that technology will nest and reside. Third, we need to consider how the technology will interact with those regimes. Are they going to co-constitute or reinforce power hierarchies and asymmetries, or do they have the capacity to resist them or ask people to rethink some of those logics?

Eleanor Drage (06:00)

To go even more specific, what is a drone? Your answer got me thinking about whether there can be good drones. This is terribly subjective. Perhaps you can answer those two things together.

Beryl Pong (06:11)

Yes, that's a good segue into whether text can be good because I can think of numerous books titled The Good Drone as if to say the drone is this reflexive feeling that's already negative and we need to append something to ameliorate that. A drone is an unmanned vehicle or a system usually controlled autonomously. Drones can operate in different geographies, including the air, on land, on and underwater, and in newer frontiers, possibly in outer space. People are exploring ways of using unmanned systems in all of these realms.

Most commonly, we think of drones as those that are in the air, called UAVs or unmanned aerial vehicles, because these have been developing for some time and they're the ones that are most accessible in terms of everyday imagining. You see a lot of flying unmanned aerial vehicles when people are trying to take photographs of themselves from the air. They are also most accessible because they are the cheapest. They are closest to civil society.

Beyond the drone as the flying object, there is a bigger assemblage involved in what a drone is. It might include cameras, sensors like LiDAR, infrared, software navigation systems. Some would say that the drone itself is an assemblage of all of those things.

For me, an important thing that distinguishes a drone from something that's just remotely piloted is that there is a payload. It has a capacity to carry something. Sometimes it's very small, sometimes it's big. With military defense drones, it might be something like a Hellfire missile. The capacity to carry something and what that signifies is an important aspect of what a drone is. And I should answer now whether drones are good.

Eleanor Drage (07:56)

What do you think? Can there be a good drone in your view?

Beryl Pong (07:59)

I think there can be. There can be good drones, but if we go back to the affordance question, a drone is about being able to be somewhere where you as the user physically do not need to be. That is the baseline consideration and opportunity that the drone offers. When you think about it like that, you need to think about whether that prosthetic relationship is desirable.

Do you want to be able to do something, see something, know something from the perspective of remote sensing, from the perspective of not being there? In some contexts that is more straightforward. A lot of people use drones to manage nuclear energy. It's safer than having manned labor. But sometimes it's less straightforward, in terms of drone monitoring over sites of forced migration. You want to capture information about what's happening below, but is it giving you the motivations, the stories, the political circumstances behind why this movement happens?

That doesn't answer your question.

Eleanor Drage (09:09)

However you want to answer it. I like the way that you talked about utility, does it do what it purports to do? We don't have to necessarily think about ethics when we talk about that. What you're saying is that even the thing that it says it will do, it doesn't necessarily do because it doesn't give you enough context to make decisions.

Beryl Pong (09:23)

Yes, exactly. What a good drone is, is not drones for good.

There's a whole discourse around drones for good that asks how we use a drone in a way that serves some kind of sociopolitical benefit, but capital and profit are part of it being good. It's often in service of starting up or providing proof of concept for something that will generate wealth or economic profit, as if the good is appended.

A good drone is not drones for good. A good drone would be a drone that understands the limitations of itself as a remote sensing object and highlights that aspect to the user. It is not a drone that is good just because it is being used by a startup for some socio-political benefit while making money for the company.

Kerry McInerney (10:33)

I think there's interesting parallels with the AI for Good movement and the critiques that were made of that. There was emphasis on ways we could develop and deploy AI and machine learning in socially justice or social benefit oriented ways, which sounds like a great idea and totally objectionable, but in practice it cleaves strongly to the model you've described of a justifiable testing ground for new products that then get modified and scaled in less beneficial ways.

The strongest parallel was with the AI for sustainability push, which was challenged. The idea was that AI would help us solve catastrophic climate problems, but AI itself is environmentally destructive through supply chains, energy use, and questions of recycling technological hardware.

I want to come back to something you mentioned at the beginning of this episode, your background in literary studies and how that shapes how you think about drones and other technologies. At the Center for Drones and Culture, culture is at the heart of how you think about drones and drone use. You also focus on drone aesthetics. I want to ask about drone aesthetics, what it is and why it's essential to think about drones through this cultural lens.

Beryl Pong (11:57)

We often think of drones and their ethical questions in terms of technicities. That's often how tech is regulated. Aesthetics brings an important lens. I think of aesthetics in three dimensions. I think of aesthetics as art or cultural products that we coexist with in everyday life. I also think of aesthetics in terms of the 18th century conception, the relationship between the mind, the body, and the external environment. Things have an aesthetic dimension, and our encounter with it is part of how we interpret what it is, why it belongs there, what it's doing.

That has consequences for a third understanding of aesthetics, which is politics. Understanding the aesthetics of something allows us to see what context made it come into being, who profited, benefited or suffered from it. If we're able to see those questions through an artwork or a speculative cultural product that tells a counterfactual story, that may open new political avenues.

Foundational work in cultural studies defines culture as a system of representation with the power to signify, which is not neutral. Representations are products of, and productive of, power hierarchies and asymmetries. Culture can help make those trends visible. They are important because they are accessible in mundane ways to anybody walking down the street.

Eleanor Drage (13:42)

From the aesthetic to the humanitarian, I know from a friend who works for the World Food Programme that there was suspect use of technologies there from biometrics to drones. Can you tell us about the humanitarian use of drones? This connects to drones for good and the impossibility of that. How are they being used and what's the issue?

Beryl Pong (14:11)

It depends on the humanitarian setting. Drones are often used for mapping damage from environmental disaster zones. That's where remote sensing affordances come into play. They are used for search and rescue operations and for drug and medicine delivery to remote or hard to access places. I'm speaking with peace building organizations who stress how important drones are for managing and monitoring ceasefires. These are situations where it wouldn't be safe to have a person there or where there are political consequences to having a person there.

These are good and worthwhile uses of humanitarian drones. On the other hand, there can be problems. Drones are often used as data gathering devices. There are questions about privacy and consent. What information is being gathered? Are people consenting to be photographed, filmed or mapped? There's a fundamental asymmetry to the drone. The person who operates the drone always has power that's different from being the person who is captured or documented. It's an asymmetry that parties have to work with.

This matters for humanitarian drone journalism. Drone photographers often work against the affordance of distance and anonymity. The technology makes it easy to be anonymous and distant and capture images at scale. That tells one story. Often journalists want to tell another story. They carry the drone down, talk to people, explain what they're doing, how it works, and ask for consent.

One more problem with humanitarian drone use is that the space is often founded on Western-funded experiments at sites that are formerly colonized and have fewer regulations. One prominent humanitarian drone startup from Silicon Valley developed its technology in places like Rwanda, Nigeria, Kenya and Côte d'Ivoire, and now it's brought back to places like the United States.

It's worth thinking about where these geographies lie and what role they've played in enabling Western startups to succeed.

Kerry McInerney (17:32)

I like how you bring out the complexity in these stories. It's easy to be techno-optimist or completely dismissive. There are cases where drones might be useful, such as detecting and diffusing landmines. There are also structural inequalities and power problems that play out at the same time.

I want to move from conflict settings to civilian use of drones. Drones come from military origins but are increasingly part of everyday civilian life. What are the consequences of deploying a military technology in everyday life?

Beryl Pong (19:25)

Some people say military drones are very different from civilian drones. There is the expensive defense drone and the civilian quadcopter. Some say they are completely different technologies. I agree with some of that, but we are seeing how military drones are used in civilian contexts. They are used for policing. During the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, the US Customs and Border Agency flew a military predator drone to survey protests over Minneapolis.

At the same time, civilian drones like DJI drones are being hacked and repurposed for conflict zones like Ukraine and Russia. They are cheap, easy to lose, and easy to replace.

There's a melding between military and civilian spaces that is urgent to grapple with. One domestic sphere where this is clear is policing. Military uses are often seen as exceptional and governed by different rules. Policing is an everyday event meant to prevent or preempt.

When exceptionality enters the everyday, it becomes harder to critique power asymmetries and conflicts of interest that undergird the use of the technology.

Eleanor Drage (22:16)

That's a great explanation of why it's a problem not to think deeply about using military technologies in everyday life. On Ukraine, I remember Victoria Vdovychenko saying the world should look to Ukraine for ways of repurposing these technologies.

Beryl Pong (22:46)

Drones are increasingly like improvised explosive devices where it's hard to define what they are. In Myanmar, drones are assemblages. Parts are smuggled in, taken apart, recreated with 3D printing. This bootstrapping of parts is something to consider for drone futures. What will drones look like when they are governed by the motivations of people trying to create and use something before formal procurement?

Eleanor Drage (23:46)

Will popular culture change that? How is popular culture shaping drone use in film or photography?

Beryl Pong (23:58)

Drones are part of everyday visual culture. It's hard to look at Instagram or TikTok without seeing drone views. Photography drones have opened new ways of looking at ourselves and the environment. Drones are used in filmmaking and cinematography and have become players like helicopters once were. That is good. Drones can tell stories through their aesthetic dimensions.

My reservation is that this is new. In 10 or 15 years, drone shots will be part of everyday culture. Will drones be used because they are cheaper or because they are the best way to tell a story? Will they be used as a gimmick or because there was no other way to capture a shot?

Kerry McInerney (25:44)

And I really find this compelling the way that you've described how drones are shaping not only the individual drone user or hobbyists way of seeing but all of us when we consume popular culture and media. Yes, I've never flown a drone or used one but I have watched many a Netflix show with a very aggressive drone use. And it becomes so normalized and it wasn't until I started working with you and our colleague Amy Gator that I started to become a little bit more cognizant of how that normalization was occurring and what are the knock on political effects of that?

I think Nicholas Mirzoeff's white site is really interesting for thinking about the racial and political dimensions of the popularization of this top down view. But I want to close by asking you about a particular modality of drone culture, which I know that you've written about, which is the drone light show. And so I want to ask what is a drone light show. Have you ever seen one? And what do they show us about the aesthetics and the politics of drones?

Beryl Pong (26:44)

I've seen a drone light show. Have you seen a drone light show?

Kerry McInerney (26:47)

I feel like I might have, it's been like a very small one. I've definitely seen a light projection show.

Eleanor Drage (26:56)

Dan tried to make me go to one in Dubai and I had no desire.

Beryl Pong (27:04)

Drone light shows are part of major events like the Olympics or New Year's celebrations. They are hyped as environmentally friendly alternatives to fireworks. They haven't taken off as much as expected. They are swarm drones pre-programmed to create a moving story.

Together they form mosaics and portraits. They present an idea of cooperation.

But in person, they can feel underwhelming. You're watching lights flying around, waiting. Shows get cancelled due to wind or glitches. That brings drones back to the ground as objects we've created.

I'm interested in how this challenges our ideas of machines. Do we see them as untouchable or as tools that fail? I'd like to see more and better drone light shows and encourage people to decide for themselves.

Eleanor Drage (30:02)

Great, and I will get the good robot to fund my ticket.

Beryl Pong (30:07)

They are expensive to put on. I've thought about it as an experiment.

Eleanor Drage (30:15)

Thank you so much for coming on the show. It's got me thinking about the qualitative aspect of storytelling, which you can't get from drones because they are quantitative observational tools.

Beryl Pong (30:47)

Thank you so much for talking with me about this.