{"product_id":"9781628926323","title":"Drone","description":"\u003cstrong\u003eDrone\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor(s): Adam Rothstein\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eObject Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDrones are in the newspaper, on the TV screen, swarming through the  networks, and soon, we're told, they'll be delivering our shopping. But what are drones? The word encompasses everything from toys  to weapons. And yet, as broadly defined as they are, the word “drone”  fills many of us with a sense of technological dread. Adam Rothstein cuts  through the mystery, the unknown, and the political posturing, and talks  about what drones really are: what technologies are out there, and  what’s coming next; how drones are talked about, and how they are  represented in popular culture.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt turns out that drones are not as  scary as they appear—but they are more complicated than you might  expect. Drones reveal the strange relationships that humans are forming  with their new technologies.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eObject Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in \u003ci\u003eThe Atlantic\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eReview(s):\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Adam Rothstein's primer on drones covers such themes ... as the representation of drones in science fiction and popular culture. The technological aspects are covered in detail, and there is interesting discussion of the way in which our understanding of technology is grounded in historical narratives. As Rothstein writes, the attempt to draw a boundary between one technology and another often ignores the fact that new technologies are not quite as new as we think.” —\u003ci\u003eTimes Literary Supplement (reviewed by Christopher Coker)\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Readers interested in technology and\/or warfare will very much enjoy reading Drone... Adam Rothstein did an admirable job, writing about every aspect of drones in detailed and organized fashion... [T]hose keenly interested in the subject will gobble this up.” —\u003ci\u003eGeorge Erdosh, San Francisco Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“[Rothstein's] book is a rich collection of vignettes about how to imagine and comprehend the drone ... [Drone] really excels in tackling the multiple meanings, symbols, and narratives attached to drones, all of which provide a bird's eye view (drone's eye view?) of the terrain of contemporary debate ... for those beginning a research project, or just the curious, this small book packs a big punch.” —\u003ci\u003eIan G. R. Shaw, University of Glasgow, Antipode\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Adam Rothstein's \u003ci\u003eDrone \u003c\/i\u003epresents this iconic figure of contemporary warfare-the disconcertingly alluring autonomous airborne machine-through the lens of a different kind of history. Privacy and tracking algorithms run side by side with the ethics of self-guided munitions, activist political programs butt heads with emerging corporate business strategies, and all of it is tied back to the earliest experiments in driverless vehicles, quaint ancestors of today's over-mythologized UAVs. In the end, Rothstein's book is an exploration of technical agency: Where did drones come from-and what do they want?” —\u003ci\u003eGeoff Manaugh, Editor of Landscape Futures: Instruments, Devices and Architectural Inventions and Author of the website BLDGBLOG\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“This lucid, visionary work is as close as one can get to science fiction without the baggage of science and\/or fiction. Adam Rothstein's Drone will be a wonderful cultural artifact in twenty years. It will be like a broken pomegranate of contemporary speculations and anxieties.” —\u003ci\u003eBruce Sterling, Author of The Zenith Angle and Professor of Internet Studies and Science Fiction at the European Graduate School, Switzerland\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Portland writer and artist Adam Rothstein's contribution to Bloomsbury's Object Lessons series digs into the history and meaning of autonomous aircraft-the ways they work, the tasks they perform, where they come from, and how the way we talk about them reflects the priorities and anxieties of our age.” —\u003ci\u003eBen Waterhouse\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eOregon Humanities\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"The Object Lessons series achieves something very close to magic: the books take ordinary—even banal—objects and animate them with a rich history of invention, political struggle, science, and popular mythology. Filled with fascinating details and conveyed in sharp, accessible prose, the books make the everyday world come to life. Be warned: once you've read a few of these, you'll start walking around your house, picking up random objects, and musing aloud: 'I wonder what the story is behind this thing?'\"—\u003ci\u003eSteven Johnson, best-selling author of How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"The Object Lessons project, edited by game theory legend Ian Bogost and cultural studies academic Christopher Schaberg, commissions short essays and small, beautiful books about everyday objects from shipping containers to toast. \u003ci\u003eThe Atlantic\u003c\/i\u003e hosts a collection of \"mini object-lessons\", brief essays that take a deeper look at things we generally only glance upon ('Is bread toast only insofar as a human toaster perceives it to be \"done?\" Is bread toast when it reaches some specific level of nonenzymatic browning?'). More substantive is Bloomsbury's collection of small, gorgeously designed books that delve into their subjects in much more depth.\" \u003ci\u003e—Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eISBN:  9781628926323\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e ","brand":"Bloomsbury Academic","offers":[{"title":"Paperback \/ softback","offer_id":40595584450766,"sku":"9781628926323","price":14.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0600\/7029\/7806\/products\/getimage_3987c81c-2138-4178-a686-68543bed33dd.jpg?v=1637835701","url":"https:\/\/pickwickbookshop.com\/products\/9781628926323","provider":"Pickwick Bookshop","version":"1.0","type":"link"}