Drones are increasingly understood and imagined as important actors, inhabiting and transforming aerial space. From their entrenched establishment within battlefield operations, drones have spawned into a diverse ecosystem of platforms and applications, increasingly punctuating domestic urban airspace. While occupying a status as exemplars of urban innovation, the drone poses, and remains bound to, a range of techno-cultural contestations – from challenges around airspace integration, to concerns around privacy, safety and pollution. Thinking with commercial drone futures, and specifically the logistics sector, this article interrogates the role of speculation in this unfolding techno-landscape. In so doing we turn to two key sites through which the drone is anticipated – namely patents and adverts – as lenses through which to investigate projected visualisations underpinning the emergent, envisioned and anticipated drone. We argue that such drone speculations do not simply and solely envision new means of circulating goods, people and information, but rather embody and act to promote a particular set of aerial desires and social relations. Critically unpacking envisioned notions of frictionless mobility, instant consumption, and the appropriation of vertical spaces and spectra, we argue that such speculative sites and practices importantly participate in a techno-fetishist agenda positing drone technology as a privileged and panacea agent of futurity, while often eliding its implications.<br /><br />Key messages<br /><ul><li>Drones are increasingly understood and imagined as important actors, inhabiting and transforming urban airspace.</li><br /><li>Interrogating the domestic drone, we offer a critical visual analysis of key sites through which it is speculated.</li><br /><li>While envisioning convenience from the air, commercial drone speculations also embody and promote particular aerial desires.</li><br /><li>We argue that staying with speculation enables the critical unpacking of notions of frictionless mobility, instant consumption and the appropriation of vertical space.</li></ul>

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In unserem Beitrag fassen wir drei Themen einer jüngst veröffentlichten Studie zur Technikfolgenabschätzung ziviler Drohnen zusammen. Erstens legen wir dar, dass der Rechtsbegriff der Drohne unklar geregelt ist und dass eine technische Definition des Begriffs „Drohne“ der falsche Weg ist. Wir präsentieren eine alternative Einbindung des Drohnenbegriffs in das europäische Luftfahrtrecht. Zweitens beschreiben wir die Komplexität der technisch zu regelnden Aspekte, um eine Einbindung von Drohnen in das Luftraumsystem ohne direkten Sichtkontakt zu ermöglichen. Wir beschreiben das Problem der technischen Sicherheit und die Komponenten eines Verkehrsmanagementsystems für Drohnen. Drittens verdeutlichen wir, dass bei der Bewältigung der ethischen, rechtlichen und sozialen Herausforderungen von Drohnen eine Vollzugslücke besteht, insbesondere im Datenschutz.

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