Soon, if you buy one of our print book versions from Amazon, you may find it delivered by ‘air mail’ so to speak. Amazon has announced that it is working diligently on having drones deliver packages of less than five pounds directly to your door. Apparently, they think they will even be able to have the drone put it in your garage. Do I have to give them my garage door opener, or are they gonna be so smart they can pick the electric lock circuitry? This new version of ‘air mail’ really troubles me. How far do we go with it? Is Santa Claus going to be in trouble eventually when Amazon has its drones bring packages down the chimney for Christmas? What will Santa and the Easter Bunny do except stand in the unemployment line, I guess. Will Amazon eventually get in the food delivery business and compete with the various emerging Grub Hub type companies? As the power and lifting capability of drones inevitably increases, will they deliver your new car or a refrigerator…perhaps replete with a week’s worth of groceries?
Then there’s the air traffic control issue. With millions of deliveries, how will they avoid crashing and burning on your front lawn. Will they smack into birds and have Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, and the Audubon Society picketing them? Will they inevitably bring down an airliner when they get sucked up in some 737’s jet intake as it takes off on the runway. How does their traffic control work with automobiles? And I’d sure hate to get smacked by one swooping down for a delivery when I’m out riding my bike. Finally, what do we do with all the unemployed mail carriers and UPS drivers? Try as they may, they won’t fit in the seat of one of those little drones. And we won’t be able to look up at our crowded skies and even find the sun with so much buzzing drone air traffic going on. The slogan of the mail carrier was basically “neither rain nor snow will keep this courier from making his rounds on time.” I can just see the drones all huddled in the hangar playing Go Fish when it rains or snows, and shivering in fear when the lightning is striking all around them. It’s kinda creepy! And then there’s the issue of whether it’s the same drone all the time and we become friends. Do I have to give a drone a Christmas present like I do the postman…the etiquette here is a bit murky.
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Greg
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