This concept and forward thinking is of the type I make a conscious effort to protect from skepticism and naysayers. Aside from any obvious or glaring safety issues, ideas like this one, that teeter on the reality-joke line, are the exact ones that bring about true disruption. And that's why I encourage everyone around me to keep an open and forgiving mind, like you would with a child.
Will Amazon Prime Air work? I don't know, but I hope so.
Agreed. So far, I've seen nothing but specious fear-mongering and nonsensical "what-if" arguments against this thing.
I can understand why people doubt the feasibility of drone delivery, especially given the legal impediments to adoption. Frankly, I doubt that this type of service will be practical within four years. What I can't understand is why people openly reject the idea of drones.
I don't see how Prime Air is any less safe or efficient than sending thousands of five-ton metal boxes barreling down residential streets. I don't see why a five-pound piece of plastic falling from the sky poses an appreciably greater risk than a branch falling on you. I don't see how people can draw parallels between small, low-altitude consumer drones and military UAVs. The level of fear surrounding this announcement makes no sense.
The response to Prime Air goes far beyond skepticism. It's incoherent, fanatical pessimism, and it's really dissapointing.
Law students (most) take a class called Criminal Procedure that heavily covers 4th, 5th, and (to a smaller extent) 6th amendment jurisprudence. I took it in 2011 when drones were really heavy in the news cycle. Our final exam was solely on drones and how their adoption would effect/be effected by 4th amendment considerations.
So with all that said, I really really hate the idea of drones. They get places humans cannot. They're expected in places *humans cannot be. These places are protected right now. Just putting drones in operation (especially in the hands of the public) means every single bit of the public up to the point of actually suctioning cup on your window is possibly fair game. Of course, I hope that reasonable regulations are at play but I am pessimistic about it. I think people will want their taco drones and their 30 min Amazon delivery MORE than they want to hear how it might impact their privacy.
So it's not safety, it's not "oh no, they're like the military now". It's purely the loss of private airspace that still remains and the potential to abuse it audio/visual wise.
I can already buy a little quadcopter, attach a camera to it, and fly it around; the relevant regulations here are just about commercial use, right?
That's actually a minor quibble with your argument, though. My real problem is this: you're skeptical that they won't be regulated enough, so you want them regulated out of existence? Your solution is a bit like saying, "well, the NSA will be able to spy on our network connections, so let's just not have an internet." If you want good tech policy, you need to support good tech policy, not just throw your hands up and say, "there could be adverse consequences, so no new technology!" Otherwise we'll never get anywhere.
Yes, the relevant regulations are about commercial use which is COMPLETELY backwards from a privacy standpoint.
To answer your question, no, I don't want drones to not exist and it would not be worthwhile if I did. Since they obviously do and will continue to exist, we should be thinking about the privacy considerations first with regards to how you would restrict the government's use of drones and THEN go on to the commercial considerations with those same restrictions in mind.
There's a little known set of 4th amendment jurisprudence attached to technology that says something along the lines of "if the public can't generally take advantage of the technology (have it be readily accessible to them), neither can law enforcement when executing a 'search'" - think super-accurate heat sensors that can essentially x-ray the interior of homes, etc...Well we are about to just hand an entire domain to them!
In short: law enforcement is salivating at the thought of commercial drone use because they won't have any regulations applicable to them.
I assume you mean Kyllo, which I have a number of problems with (though I'm somewhat reassured by some of Scalia's points in the majority opinion). But maybe my imagination isn't good enough - what's the scary scenario with drones that Kyllo makes legal?
It's a new thing. People are always scared of new things. And soon enough it's just a part of life and you can't believe society ever got along without it. There is a massive danger that overly conservative regulations will impede technological progress and innovation.
And to be perfectly honest I'm not worried about privacy from it. There isn't much you can see from a drone you can't with binoculars and possibly a ladder. And besides that, no one is going to spy on you. It's going to be something minor that happens to one out of a million people and then gets completely exaggerated by the media.
Whereas changing the world's distribution system has massive implications on everyone's lives, and many of the other possible uses of drones can change the world as well. Besides it's an awesome hobby and I'd hate to see it get banned just because it became more popular.
> I don't see how Prime Air is any less safe or efficient than sending thousands of five-ton metal boxes barreling down residential streets.
Here's the difference: there's a person directly controlling that five-ton metal box.
Even if you assume that a) the person behind the wheel of a delivery truck is arguably more fallible than a drone following a flight plan and b) a company operating a drone will have the same potential legal liabilities if the drone causes harm to property or an individual, you should not underestimate or ignore the comfort that being able to "blame" or hold a human being accountable provides.
> The response to Prime Air goes far beyond skepticism. It's incoherent, fanatical pessimism, and it's really dissapointing.
There are many commercial applications for drones that I don't see a whole lot of opposition to. These include agriculture, construction, mining and oil. Many if not most of these involve the use of drones in areas that are sparsely populated or where access is limited to authorized personnel.
The only thing that's incoherent and disappointing here is pretending that there's no difference between these "industrial" applications and applications that would inject drones into highly-populated areas, particularly those that are residential.
Suburban residential is very low-population-density, a few people per square mile, less during working hours. It wouldn't be hard to put a box next to your driveway where a copter could drop a package, and never get within a hundred feet of anybody.
The real population density issue is downtown, during working hours. Even then folks are on the sidewalk or indoors. There's nobody on the roof for instance. Copters could drop a package into a chute, again without getting close to anybody.
> Suburban residential is very low-population-density, a few people per square mile...
It sounds like you're confusing "suburban residential" with "backwater rural." Census data[1] shows that there are a lot more people per square mile than you suggest.
Even a small metropolitan area like Vernal, Utah, which has a population of just 25,224, has a population density of ~250 people per square mile.
Why would we turn off our critical thinking skills when contemplating claims of a leap in technology that transcends what many of us understand to be possible currently?
There are times to encourage creative thought, like with children or within the context of a brainstorming meeting.
But most of the time we should evaluate claims critically with the best practices of the Scientific Method.
IMO, there's way too much gullibility in our society for religions, junk science, Internet scams, and political dogma.
The really hard part of critical thinking is training your intuitive, heuristic filters. Applying rigorous critical thinking to everything takes way too long. Conversely, applying critical thinking to nothing at all makes you a gullible idiot. Developing that filter to strike the right balance is a lifelong learning process.
Sure, but if I could turn the societal dial a few clicks toward critical thinking vs day dreaming, I'd do it.
The unquestionable success of the Scientific Method has shown that careful analysis and requirement of experimental proof far outstrip bumbling about with our own natural human level of random thoughts that we label "creativity".
But then I look around and see more need for creativity now than ever. Technology is changing faster than ever and that's impacting society in ways previously only speculated about. To me that means there's a lot of opportunity out there waiting to be captured by people crazy enough to do a little dreaming.
> Why would we turn off our critical thinking skills when contemplating claims of a leap in technology that transcends what many of us understand to be possible currently?
Because it's Amazon, and they're one of a few companies able to choose the technology, location, and customer base for the system, and willing to operate a service at a loss. If it's only possible to deliver this to suburban homes in Little Rock, Arkansas, and they lose money on each delivery, then they still can do it.
Well said. It's original thinking like this that moves us forward as a human race. And in order to move forward, you have to take huge risks, face uncertainty and do whatever you can to prove everyone wrong.
Here's to hoping that Amazon learns from Google' mistake and doesn't decide to add 'additional features' once this is already deployed. (I'm referring to Google's Wifi AP scanning debacle w/ Google StreetView trucks)
But I am not sure this is the big problem in this space.
Current delivery time = 1 day for last mile + >1 day for warehouse -> local area
This method reduces the last mile delivery time down to 30 mins but it is not clear how the second part would be optimized down. At least, without losing the value proposition of Amazon - giant centralized warehouses instead of local retail outlets.
(just using orders of magnitude for an example, the actual numbers for best efficiency probably aren't quite so nice)
The 1000 most frequently ordered items in a warehouse near your neighborhood.
The 10000 most frequently ordered items in a city-wide warehouse.
The 100,000 most frequently ordered items in a regional warehouse.
Amazon already has the regional warehouse part.
I'd guess that this might be worth doing even if only the 1,000 most frequently ordered items can get there in 30 minutes, and should definitely be worth doing if you can get the 10,000 most frequently ordered items there in 30 minutes.
By having more local warehouses that stock the top x most sold things. 100% of the things I can readily remember that I ordered the last 2 or 3 months are so common that they were all in stock in the local shop that I bought most of them at (a large online retailer here in the Netherlands has 6 or 8 or so shops across the country, for local pick up or to try stuff in-store). And they were not the most common things either - a steam wall paper remover, a router (of the woodworking type, not the networking type), a specific type of headphone. If they can have those levels of stock in high street bricks and mortar shops, they could have even larger inventories when they could store them in fully automated warehouses in cheap industrial areas. The accuracy in stock prediction ('shop stock', not 'financial markets stock', obviously) is jaw-dropping.
Man this is going to destroy high street shopping (even further, I might add) - imagine being able to order 10 outfits for trying on from your own home, try them on and send the 9 you don't want back right away, in less time than it would have taken you to just drive to wherever you can buy it off line. If clothing (and other main street) shops are having a hard time now, wait until they have to compete with this...
I assume they would start to have distributed micro ware houses (shipping containers, dry vans) that are launching points for drones or dudes on scooters. I feel sorry for minimart.
Also, if serious, they should buy 7-11. I still don't understand why Blockbuster wasn't scooped up like hot cakes. All those juicy retail locations.
Will Amazon Prime Air work? I don't know, but I hope so.