From a View to a Kill: Drones and Late Modern War
After reading the article "From a View to a Kill: Drones and Late Modern War" by Derek Gregory, my perception towards Drones in regards to it's purpose and ethical consensus shifted quite drastically. I have never perceived a Drone to be such a viable killing device. When speaking of Drones, the first thing that usually comes to mind, would be to use it for scouting or reconnaissance of surreptitious information. However, as stated within the readings, these drones are often use to assassinate political figures in the middle-east or members of the Al-Qaeda, which raises MANY ( and I capitalize the word many ) controversies politically and ethically, and besmirch the concurrence of many people towards the usage of drones.
The author described with great details the methods which are required in order to make these drones "work". Usually, these drones are piloted by a pilot and a co-pilot who are sitting behind a computer screen monitoring the drone's every action from the "Ground Control Station". The drones are guided towards a target or a location which was given to them by the pilot. Then, the pilot executes the orders that was given to them.Very much like playing a video game, these pilot can kill just by seeing their target, and because they are so far away from the person they have killed, the theory is that there would be no sophisticated emotional attachment from killing. This raises another concern, regarding the psychological well being of these "pilots" and how killing by just seeing affect their moral judgement. As one would have expected, seeing another person dying because of them, whether it be on a monitor screen or right in front of them, would cause a sense of guilt or at least "uncomfortable-ness". In that regards, depending on what type of person the pilots are, their mental stability are effected drastically.
Personally, I believe that Drones are magnificent technologies with a lot of potential instill upon it. However, when the drones are turned into killing devices, the ethical consensus of having these drones in the first place, changes radically. If the drones were not associated with killing, people would affiliate themselves more and feel more comfortable with the utilization of drones to make life more convenient ( which people are doing already, but there are still some difficulty in many areas ).
I agree with you that Drone is an amazing invention, which can be applied to many different fields, making our lives much better and easier. However, personally I strongly disagree with the idea of using drones in battlefield. When you mentioned that when a pilot use a drone to assassinate targets thousands of miles away, you think that it will still cause the emotion disturbance to the pilot, I think it is the other way around. A solider is trained to fight in battlefield which means killing is inevitable. By doing it through computer, it will be only easier for the pilot. A normally solider could get used to killing and be emotionless, so could the pilot controlling the drone. Therefore I think using drones in war is really bad idea.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with Nick. Before our lecture and the reading about drones. Quite honestly I have never even heard about them. After our lecture I started hearing the talk about drones even more. Especially what Amazon has in store in the future about the "30 minute delivery" which is quite a shocker for the online shopper. I have even heard other peoples opinions about amazon using drones and they think this is a bad idea. People have said that some of the reasons that this may not work is because others might start stealing packages, or even shooting these drones to steal the packages.
ReplyDeleteThis article and the lecture on drones ties in with how technology is evolving so much, that it might even be dangerous and a threat to us. Not only are drones used to get information to help us in research, but they are mostly used in war and violence. I agree with Nick that this does create a lot of ethical issues, because even though these drones are not real, the people controlling these drones are. Some of these people have an emotional attachment to these killings, but many others do not. When you are controlling these drones, you see the before, during and after of what you have killed or destroyed. Because many of these people have used these drones for a while, they have grown to not care. This is an issue because after work, when they come home, they are still in that state of mind to kill people. It is sometimes hared to seperate work from home which not only brings up ethical points but living points.