There are many examples of technologies in search of an answer to a question nobody asked. For example: why can’t my flat white fly? The possible is, after all, different from the necessary. But none of that should put a dampener on last week’s news that Manna, the Irish drone delivery company, announced a successful funding round of $50 million, and is planning to create 400 jobs across Ireland and the US. This is great news for an Irish company.
It is less great news for those of us who find the sound and presence of drones, and the prospect of them expanding everywhere across Ireland to deliver doughnuts and butter chicken, profoundly annoying.
Companies offering convenience are all about reducing friction in consumer behaviour. Friction is the gap between the wanting and the having. Sometimes these attempts at reducing friction are not entirely frictionless, as anyone who has ever had an unexpected item in the bagging area will attest. What food-by-drone does speak to though, is the triumph of convenience over everything. Manna boss Bobby Healy told Brendan O’Connor on RTÉ Radio 1 two years ago that among the most popular things people order by drone is a cup of coffee.
The friction that exists between you and your coffee includes going outside and being in the world. With drone delivery, that pesky element of life is removed. Now, I know you can’t wander off to your local cafe if you have toddlers hanging out of you, or you can’t leave the house because your fourth Vinted package of the week is about to land, but placing such impossibilities for escape aside, it is always worth going outside.
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I also appreciate there are things that happen in the public realm that some people think are great and others dislike. Some people hate streets being shut off to car traffic, others love it. Some people loathe the bright white light from lamp-post LEDs and prefer a more subtle glow. Some people didn’t even like bus lanes back in the day. In 1980, Dublin’s first contraflow bus lane was introduced on Parliament Street, and a headline ran in The Irish Times that read ‘Saga of the city bus lane’ – because it took a year-and-a-half from conception to implementation. Today, the average contemporary Dubliner might think: “That quick to change a bit of a street? If only they could see us now.” Of course, Dublin bureaucracy, like money, is subject to inflation over time. Parliament Street, by the way, is now pedestrianised. That is to say, things change.
I’m not opposed to change and innovation. But I do not like annoying change. I know plenty of people may think drone delivery is cool, handy, and can’t wait for it to come to their estate or village. A load of burgers floating down into your garden to add some pizazz to a children’s birthday party may sound to you like great craic. Healy told a story on the radio about a man who ordered an onion by drone because he wanted it for his steak. Who would deny a man an onion?
While I’m not alone in finding the sound of drones irritating and intrusive, I did want to find out why I feel that way. I called someone who knows a lot about sound, the sound artist, composer, producer and engineer, Jane Arnison, who lectures in experiments in the future of producing at NYU.
“Each animal has a different bandwidth they’re sensitive to based on evolution,” she said. She says the high-frequency tonal buzz of drones falls in a range humans are naturally sensitive to.
“It’s something we’re not good at blocking out because we’re so used to tuning in.” The sound of drones, she said, “relates to things that sting us. Because it’s a buzzing, we’re wired to pay attention to it. In this way, drones function as robotic pests. They make the same noise as something you would swat away.”
[ Manna and Rotunda team up to test drone flights for medical suppliesOpens in new window ]
Sounds in our surroundings, Arnison said, signal things to us: church bells, sirens, alarms. “We’re used to listening to sounds for cues; cultural, safety, a range of things. The sound of drones makes us think of a sound as a cue, but it’s not actually doing that. That’s why it’s a frustrating sound, because it triggers you to think: ‘Alert! What is this? Do I need to be concerned?’ That is a sociological and biological response, and then there’s the physics of the frequency range they’re in.”
Of course, Manna and other drone delivery companies go to great lengths to reassure the public that their drones are quiet enough and not annoying. It’s true that there are loads of other annoying sounds in our environment too: house alarms, car traffic, building noise, me talking at length about drones.
But I do want to point out the obvious here: we don’t actually need drone-delivered coffee. Delivering medicine to the sick and infirm, whizzing vital equipment to hospitals and sites of rescue and disaster, sending groceries and meals to people with mobility needs – these are all fantastic uses. How brilliant to know that in times of crisis or need, drones will be at the ready to assist. But coffee? Seriously?
