The Rise (Literally and Figuratively) of The Drone

Image result for dronesImage result for drones In class, we have gone over Rogers' Diffusion of Innovations and Ideas, and attempted to plug things into the graph to see its trend.  For this blog, I will be using Drones, and seeing their trends as related to what we have learned in class.  For the graph, there are 5 main parts: Exploratory, Uptake/Ascent, Tipping Point, Saturation, and Laggards.  Exploratory holds the pioneers or inventors of the product, and says that only people who invented it or use it for a specialized field will have need for it.  The Uptake/Ascent category holds the Early Adopters, who are the people that saw the benefit of the product or idea earlier than most.  The Tipping Point is the point where the product has been accepted as necessary in society, and many people have one or are planning to get one.  The saturation line shows how as time goes on, and more people buy the product or accept the idea, it becomes more and more assumed that everyone will have one.  Finally, the laggards are people who will likely never get the product or accept the idea; and there will always be laggards, no matter the idea or product.

 When it comes to drones, I believe we are in the first half of the early adopters phase.  People are seeing the use for drones, whether for commercial uses or personal entertainment, but there are not throngs of people rushing to buy drones either.  I believe they are catching on for commercial use because people are becoming more and more used to seeing drone footage for other businesses, and want some for their own.  For recreational use, I believe drones are catching on for the simple fact that, for many, flying a drone is fun.  They allow regular people to fly up and see views only helicopter pilots are accustomed to seeing, and you get this view for much less than a helicopter costs.  When it comes to the Diffusion of Innovations, I personally don't believe the drone has much farther to go.  Unlike smartphones or laptops, the uses of a drone are not useful to everyone.  Not everyone needs aerial footage of something, not does everyone think that flying a drone is a good pastime.  For me, as I begin to enter into the media field, I am very excited about the future of drones.  It opens up a whole new realm for production that wasn't easily accessible before now, and the possibilities will continue to improve overtime.  But, having said that, I know that not everyone shares my excitement for drones.  Drones are a useful tool for anyone who wants to learn how to use them, but they are not a tool that everyone needs to learn how to use.

Links: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/dec/02/drones-used-to-deliver-parcels-to-remote-alpine-villages

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Whistleblowers: The Hard Part of "Freedom of Speech"

Image
For the past couple months, and really the last three years but this is just the newest thing, the mainstream news outlets have been showing 24 hour coverage of the Trump-Ukraine hearings.  This started when an unnamed whistleblower, now known but not confirmed as Eric Ciaramella, leaked information regarding President Trump and a conversation he had with representatives from Ukraine.  This sparked the latest in a long line of impeachment queries that have been launched against Trump since even before he was sworn in as president; and, as the evidence has been flushed out, it now seems that Ciaramella never had any firsthand knowledge of the claimed incident.  While this is a bad example, it is an example nonetheless of whistleblowing: the act of alerting the masses and news media of wrongdoing by an official or their administration.  Chelsea Maning, Edward Snowden, and Daniel Ellsberg are names that generally come to mind when people talk about whistleblowing...
Read more

The Rise of the Computer as a Household Object

Image
  For class this past week, we were divided up into groups and each presented on a form of technology that has changed or helped progress communication.  I chose the Personal Computer.  As I researched all the history of the personal computer, I was reminded how far we've come in the advancement of technology over the past half a century.  People from my generation, myself included, take the fact that we have access to computers and the internet whenever we want it for granted, and doing this research presentation really reminded me of that.  Without going into a full history of the PC, it started out as a glorified calculator.  The idea of a machine   that could send messages, play games, or even just have a color screen was foreign to early PC developers.  It came in pieces that you had to assemble yourself, and when it was complete, it looked like a pile of thrown together parts when compared to todays computers.  But, in a d...
Read more

The Radical Idea of a Court By The People, For The People

Image
  As we have talked about the founding of our nation, and especially our form of government, it has further astounded me that the Founding Fathers had enough foresight to form the government in the way they did.  Three separate branches, keeping each other in check, all getting their power to operate from the people, was an idea the world had never heard of before.  One of the aspects that I did not know much about was the supreme court.  The two videos we watched for class that are linked below really explained the courts in simple ways and had one main theme: the judges are Americans just like the rest of us, and they get their power from the people in the same way that the other two branches do.  When talking about the history of the supreme court, the fact that the courts receive their power from "public faith," as the video puts it, is possibly the most radical idea to come from the Founding Fathers.  A people who decides their own laws, and peti...
Read more