Most of us figure Jeff Bezos of Amazon was smoking something before he made that announcement about the drone deliveries in 2 years, but still, it's an interesting thing to think about.

Just before that news came out, a friend of mine told me he was going to try to make some extra money by working with another photographer who wanted to use the "toy" helicopters armed with a camera to provide aerial shots/video of different areas people wanted to see. And then a day or two later I read this Amazon story. These guys must read all the same tech articles.

About Amazon, I can appreciate their wanting to come up with some new ideas, but considering that Bezos' drone delivery system would look just like the armed weapon versions, I wish he had gone in the direction of less frightening, greener and less-harmful-to-the-economy ideas (not to mention more realistic ideas). Some of the smartest ideas include a step back, technologically.

Since people need jobs, why can't Amazon and other delivery companies begin thinking of super-efficient ways to use actual people to deliver, perhaps in shorter/smaller neighborhood routes? There must be some way to integrate the online and offline systems to help this happen. Since we have fewer post offices and all that.

(Because I'm so pessimistic) it's always in the back of my mind that society is falling apart and we may lose the current infrastructure, so systems that are naturally simpler and use much less energy should be sought first.

And there should have been more to fall back on, anyway. A strong system should have redundancy. If you live in the suburbs, you probably have a car but there had better be plentiful bus (and taxi) service because cars aren't infallible. What about other forms of transportation -- bike paths? Shouldn't there be a strong adult tricycle market too, and various electric/hydro/magnetic vehicles and maybe even animal carriers? Maybe some large system powered by the actual people walking on it? Why can't we have some choice?

Oh, yeah. The oil industry made sure we didn't get any choice. They wanted highways from here to eternity, and a galaxy of individual cars on them. And that's what we've got.

Too bad the suburbs are becoming increasingly isolated because of job loss and cutbacks to bus service everywhere.
See, this is why I want to hear more crazy ideas like the air drop delivery thing. We need more ideas.