An abandoned Australian ‘experiment’ shows that the public can successfully object to what companies and politicians claim is inevitable progress
cratch a digital capitalist and you’ll find a technological determinist – someone who believes that technology drives history. These people see themselves as agents of what Joseph Schumpeter famously described as “creative destruction”. They revel in “moving fast and breaking things” as the Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg, used to put it until his PR people convinced him it was not a good vibe, not least because it implied leaving taxpayers to pick up the broken pieces.
But for the narrative of inevitability to translate into widespread general deployment of a technology, politicians eventually have to buy into it too. We’re seeing a lot of this at the moment with AI, and it’s not clear yet how that will play out in the long run. Some of the omens are not good, though.
The company in question is Wing, an offshoot of Google’s parent company Alphabet. Its mission is “building delivery drones, and working towards the day when these aircraft can deliver everything from consumer goods to emergency medicine – a new commerce operation that opens up universal access to the sky”.
In many other places, people would probably just have complained and shrugged. But Bonython turned out to be different. A group of professional residents set up a Facebook page and a functioning website, produced regular newsletters and knocked on doors. They lobbied federal and local MPs, contacted local, national and international media, and deluged local authorities with freedom of information requests.
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