Google chairman Eric Schmidt certainly knows about revolutionary technology. So his warning at the weekend about the need to regulate the civilian use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or drones has caught our attention.
In an interview with the Guardian newspaper, Mr Schmidt raised the spectre of feuding neighbours using scaled-down versions of military drones to intimidate and harass each other over the picket fence. Apart from the irony that these warnings come from a man whose company stands accused of its own privacy violations - intercepting people's personal data over Wi-Fi, for one - Mr Schmidt's comments are a reminder that as things change in the skies, laws and regulations down here need to keep pace.
The US Federal Aviation Administration predicts that there will be as many as 10,000 commercial drones in American airspace by the end of this decade. In the UAE, Dubai police are testing mini-UAVs made by Microdrones, a German firm. The Abu Dhabi police have also shown an interest in the technology, according to Ali Zyadat, sales manager of SecuTronic, which imports the technology to the Middle East.
For governments this trend makes practical sense: militaries and law enforcement agencies around the world use the technology to great effect to track suspects, monitor borders and control speeders. Unregulated in civilian hands, however, drones are more problematic.
These are not toys and the limits on their use should be defined. Security is one concern. A drone already on the market, called the Switchblade, is designed to crash into a target and explodes with a force equivalent to a hand grenade. The US military has already put in an order.
Yet the most immediate matter for regulators to consider is privacy. What might be the impact of a neighbour spying on another, sending a drone into the air to buzz over a home for hours, camera trained on the backyard?
Experts in the field predict that as technology becomes cheaper, manufacturers will increasingly start targeting potential civilian customers. At the Toys for Big Boys show in Dubai at the start of this year, customers could buy a hunting SUV with its own mini-drone to better track prey. And teenage boys were recently seen by The National unloading drones off the luggage belt at Abu Dhabi airport.
Mr Schmidt is correct: the time for a discussion on how these devices are bought, sold and regulated is now.
