Have a Bite of Apple?

A dragonfly-size drone was exhibited in 2005.

I was astonished to hear of insect-sized war machines that the pentagon has been deploying. War drones have been getting smaller and of course when the news appears in the mainstream press it's only because the info is so old it's no longer cutting edge.  It's only a matter of time before microdrones too join the ranks of technologies that alone can start a new arms race. Now that many of the drones have been lost or gone astray that starting gun has fired. In a few years we can expect our own skies to host spy insects. (I was going to say "foreign", but does it matter?)

What worries me most is not the prospect of swatting a fly and smearing computer chips across my window (no one I know will ever be important enough to spend that much money on), but that it will affect the way that I, and eventually all humans, look at nature. I don't know if I can ever forget that any bird or insect I see just might be, in fact, a drone. What will that do to the simple pleasure of a walk in the park? We just chomped another apple on the tree of knowledge, kicking us yet farther from the Garden.

My point is not to scare– the pentagon has already done that– but to ask the critical questions: is there any way to stop the mechanization and exploitation of any- and everything? Are humans still in control of this process? If so is there any conceivable way to stop the madness? If not, how can we then live, knowing that if this here is a real bee it might sting us, but if it isn't it might be a stinger missile that's coming. God help us!