How We Anthropomorphize the Drones We Like

Wake up at 6:03AM. Buzz out of bed. Take dog for morning walk. Warm up some tea.

Look for job on Craigslist. Find job (pizza delivery). Fail (you drop the pizza). Back to Craigslist for another job. Find job (another delivery gig, this time it’s small glass vases). Fail (you drop the vase, which shatters).

Scour online dating service for potential lover. Find potential lover (a pilot). Meet pilot for dinner. Get drunk on red wine. Go back to your place, you and the pilot. Pilot bounces as you sleep. 

Binge on ice cream, dejected, you and the dog. Is there no hope?

An email hits your inbox. It’s a job lead: “Drone wanted.”  Next thing you know, you’ve got the gig. 

Just another day in the rollercoaster life of a courier, right? Wrong. 

This is “life as a drone.” It’s a commercial, of course, for GI Web Video. But it does get you thinking about the way we attribute sentience to machines today, when services like Amazon Prime Air stand, though not without considerable hurdles, to forever change the way we interact with increasingly seamless service technologies. Over the three-and-a half minute saga above, you can’t help but anthropomorphize the little quadrotor—that’s the whole point. I did it just now: I addressed the drone and its effects as either “you” or “your” nine times. 

You have to be careful not to sexualize it all. How many of you genderized the drone? How many of you instinctively thought of the ‘bot as “male”, and were then forced to reconsider when the drone meets up with the pilot, a man? Maybe the drone is female. Maybe it’s gay. We just don’t know. 

To drone, it seems, is human.

@thebanderson