Amazon's first drone delivery

[brooklynite]

[TonyPDX]

1. It's clear that fewer humans will perform "work" as we know it today. What about the rest?

I've thought a lot about this 1970 quote by R. Buckminster Fuller lately:

"We should do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian Darwinian theory he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living.”

[Plucketeer]

2. Look Out!

Look out UPS, USPS, FedEx et al!

[eggplant]

5. All those companies HATE the last mile of shipping.

It is the costliest and most labor intensive part. The shipping to the "fulfilment center" wouldn't be by air. (Of course, it'll be by a self-driving truck, but that's a separate issue.)

[Spitfire of ATJ]

3. ...

[rickford66]

4. My thoughts...

How does it know where to land? Not everyone has a nice open level field available. It appears you have to live fairly close to the distribution center. Get off your rear and go there. Combine your trip with whatever you have to go out for. If a person is really a shut in, how could they go out in the field to pick up the package? Oh, they'd have a helper? Why couldn't the helper get the thing while shopping for other stuff? Only a limited variety of "needs" can be delivered this way, so leaving the home for "things" is necessary. About the only real use I can see for this is emergency situations or delivering ammo to surrounded troops. Can you tell I'm home from work? Hey, when are we each getting that flying car?

[eggplant]

6. For lightweight items, this is actually a huge resource saver.

This service does not require trip planning and travel -- something which could very easily be difficult for people to manage. "Get off your rear and go there" makes a LOT of assumptions about the ability of the buyer.

As for where it lands, the buyer clearly has to place a "land here" marker for the drone to find. It probably doesn't need to be in a field, but it makes for a good testing environment.

Just because a service isn't useful to you, doesn't mean it isn't useful. Lots of people don't need overnight or same-day delivery, but those that do *really* need it. Even if their need isn't obvious to you.

[rickford66]

7. Sure, some people could really use this. I agree.

But, there will have to be thousands of warehouses, stocked with every conceivable item, for those people with limited time or mobility to shop for that one light specific item. On average, how many shopping trips consist of only 5# or less of "things" ? From observing carts in the grocery store, most Americans buy at least 100# of stuff at a time. That's lots of drones back and forth. The vast majority of people in cities have little or no space for a landing and rural customers will probably be out of range of most of the warehouses. Goldilocks comes to mind. I need a specific expensive thing that's less than 5# right now and what luck I live close to a warehouse and I have a nice landing site outside and they have this item in stock. I bet the whole idea goes down in flames in a couple years.

[yuiyoshida]

8. Right now UPS and USPS will not deliver to may door,

because they call it a bad neighborhood, what makes you think Amazon will deliver to me? It will probably be shot down, or stolen. I bet someone will get money for those broken down parts!