ABSTRACT
Zoe Flood, a well-known journalist writing in The Guardian, recently summed up advances in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) thus: “Some are killing machines. Others are pesky passions of the weekend hobbyist. As such, drones have not always been welcomed in our skies”. 1 A critical observer might say that drones are all this and much more, especially since many people are increasingly held in thrall to those UAVs deployed in the service of the retail and service sectors. 2 All sorts of contradictions and ambiguities can be at identified in this respect. The very same people who protest about the militarization of drones may also want to order books through Amazon, which plans future dispatches by UAVs. Drones not only have noxious uses but promote the dehumanization of bodies into targets – for identification in service delivery, for remote monitoring in surveillance, and for destruction in war. There has also been growing public concern where drones have flown near commercial planes at airports worldwide, and in 2017 a Canadian charter skyjet was hit by a drone (without incident) as it prepared to land at Quebec City’s Jean Lesage International Airport. 3
