The article on DARPA is very dense and it took me a few readings to really understand what it was about. It appears that the IAA, or Institute of Applied Autonomy is looking to inject some much needed subversion and maybe even humor by using DARPA guidelines as their initiative.
Since the DARPA funding is really only given to projects that specifically provide solutions for them, engineers cannot fully explore actual solutions that could help civilians as well as the Army, etc. That’s where the IAA comes in. With tongue planted in cheek they have made things that speak to the DARPA guidelines, but no government would really allow or use such as the graffiti-writing machine. It’s very humorous and shows that any relatively strict guideline can turn into something with a different intended meaning.
The IAA believes that while engineers are problem-solvers, they really are unconcerned with the actual general public and end up purely making things for its employers. This ambivalence between technology being helpful, yet “ethically indifferent” is a point I’ve never really considered before and this article really made me consider it. It goes along with the other things we’ve been reading and watching where there is a general sense of ambivalence about whether technology is helpful or harmful.
Even this article written by the IAA appears to be a kind of official document which plays into their performance. The wording is concise and it’s a little hard to determine where it’s going at first which plays into the ambivalence they discuss later on. They explain their project as a Trojan horse, making their work appear to something so it gets through the gates and then it is something else entirely, something thought-provoking, potentially meaningful, and not what DARPA intends; which is, ultimately, exciting.
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