Contents
Guide
Pagebreaks of the print version
ACTING WITH TECHNOLOGY
Bonnie Nardi, Victor Kaptelinin, and Kirsten Foot, editors
Tracing Genres through Organizations: A Sociocultural Approach to Information Design, Clay Spinuzzi, 2003
Activity-Centered Design: An Ecological Approach to Designing Smart Tools and Usable Systems, Geri Gay and Helene Hembrooke, 2004
The Semiotic Engineering of Human-Computer Interaction, Clarisse Sieckenius de Souza, 2005
Group Cognition: Computer Support for Building Collaborative Knowledge, Gerry Stahl, 2006
Acting with Technology: Activity Theory and Interaction Design, Victor Kaptelinin and Bonnie A. Nardi, 2006
Web Campaigning, Kirsten A. Foot and Steven M. Schneider, 2006
Scientific Collaboration on the Internet, Gary M. Olson, Ann Zimmerman, and Nathan Bos, editors, 2008
Acting with Technology: Activity Theory and Interaction Design, Victor Kaptelinin and Bonnie A. Nardi, 2009
Digitally Enabled Social Change: Online and Offline Activism in the Age of the Internet, Jennifer Earl and Katrina Kimport, 2011
Invisible Users: Youth in the Internet Cafs of Urban Ghana, Jenna Burrell, 2012
Venture Labor: Work and the Burden of Risk in Innovative Industries, Gina Neff, 2012
Car Crashes without Cars: Lessons about Simulation Technology and Organizational Change from Automotive Design, Paul M. Leonardi, 2012
Coding Places: Software Practice in a South American City, Yuri Takhteyev, 2012
Technology Choices: Why Occupations Differ in Their Embrace of New Technology, Diane E. Bailey and Paul M. Leonardi, 2015
Shifting Practices: A Reflective Inquiry into Technology, Practice, and Innovation, Giovan Francesco Lanzara, 2016
Heteromation, and Other Stories of Computing and Capitalism, Hamid R. Ekbia and Bonnie Nardi, 2017
The Good Drone: How Social Movements Democratize Surveillance, Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick, 2020
THE GOOD DRONE
How Social Movements Democratize Surveillance
AUSTIN CHOI-FITZPATRICK
The MIT Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
2020 Austin David Fitzpatrick
This work is subject to a Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND license. Subject to such license, all rights are reserved.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Choi-Fitzpatrick, Austin, author.
Title: The good drone : how social movements democratize surveillance / Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick.
Description: Cambridge, Massachusetts : The MIT Press, [2020] | Series: Acting with technology | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019034699 | ISBN 9780262538886 (paperback)
Subjects: LCSH: Social movements--Technological innovations. | Technology--Social aspects. | Technology--Political aspects.
Classification: LCC HM881 .C4445 2020 | DDC 303.48/3--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019034699
d_r0
To Naomi Yoder, who sleeps under the stars
To Aila Pax, who flies in her dreams
To Eden Justice, who sees in the dark
CONTENTS
List of Figures
Protestors point mobile phones at authors drone.
Observational layers: terrestrial camera, low-altitude drone, kite, balloon, satellite.
Pierre Blangers altitudes of urbanization.
Buckminster FullersOperating Manual for Spaceship Earth
Tautvydas Juskauskas (left) and the author (center) training independent journalists in Central Europe.
Using drone-based digital imagery to better estimate the size of large crowds (author image).
Park here (author photo).
; by artist permission).
Graffiti drone, KATSU (by artist permission).
Drone graffiti (detail), KATSU (by artist permission).
Drone graffiti, KATSU (by artist permission).
Ni pena ni miedo (no shame nor fear), by Ral Zurita.
Robert Smithson, Spiral Jetty.
Western Cape Network on Violence Against Women (used by permission).
Tillys simple Marxist model (Organization of Production). Source: Charles Tilly,From Mobilization to Revolution(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1978), 43.
Tillys simple political process model (Interests). Source: Charles Tilly,From Mobilization to Revolution(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1978), 56.
McAdams theory of the onset of contention. Source: Doug McAdam,Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 19301970(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010).
List of Tables
Kaptelinin and Nardi Agency Typology (modified), 2006
A Primitive Typology of Emergent and Disruptive Tools
Cases in Book Categorized by Emergence and Disruption
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Books are rolling accumulations of debtsome to the living, some to those without breath.
THINGS
Since this is a book about technology, let me first thank those without breath: the technologies that made the manuscript possible. Hunches for this book emerged when I purchased a DJI Phantom from an American vendor and had it shipped to my office in Hungary. A 3D-printed gimbal, a modified camera housing, and custom landing gears were needed almost right away.
Later I bought a large latex balloon from Public Lab as well as a camera, a 3D-printed apparatus for carrying that camera, and a grip-load of string. The kite Id always had laying around, a story I tell in the second chapter. My students have built their own drones using transmitters, receivers, motors, processors, control boards, and propellersso many propellers. We ordered these things from Amazon and Banggood.
Additional fieldwork required buckets of paint and rattle cans for public art deployed onto public spaces. Paste, markers, paint, glitter, and poster board went into posters carried at some marches, and larger-than-life puppets were deployed in other protest events. Ive also used my vocal chords and my body to signal public assent and dissent.
I wrote much of this text using the software Scrivener running on a MacBook Air. Early ideas were dictated directly into Google Mail via Googles voice-to-text feature. Interviews were captured on a Motorola smartphone running Android. I conducted background research, followed hunches, and messed about using Google Search and Scholar, Quora, Wikipedia, Twitter, and, until I nominally abandoned the platform in early November 2016, Facebook.
Books from many libraries fill my office. I borrowed rolling cart number 25 from the library and never returned it (well, I never told them that). The books I liked the most I bought and marked up extensively. All research materials were stored in Dropbox (on Amazons servers worldwide). Additional books were consumed audibly (thanks, Audible). Im always losing earbuds, but those are important too.
Working drafts were printed on a Sharp MX3050V printer in San Diego, a Konica Minolta bizhub C224 in Budapest, and a Brother DCP-L2540DW at home. I read the markup with the aid of my eyeglasses (1.25/-3.00/92 x .75/-2.5/80) and marked up the copy with whatever pens I had at handI love them, but lose them. As the ideas took shape, I hailed ride-sharing services, hopped onto airplanes, and crashed in sharing-economy housing so that I could discuss my inklings in talks that required first espresso and then thumb-drives, dongles, overhead projectors, coffee, and later wine.