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Agriculture is probably a better petri dish for all this technology. Farms are already dangerous, you need to cover large swaths of land, and it's unlikely that

Agriculture is probably a better petri dish for all this technology. Farms are already dangerous, you need to cover large swaths of land, and it's unlikely that you're going to hit anything, or anyone if it falls from the sky. That said, I could imagine a world where a FedEx drone is permitted to provide last meter service from the roof of a truck, taking the package from the street to the doorstep. Additionally, widespread use of drones may reshape where core resources are stored and allocated. In Manhattan for instance, maybe lightweight warehouses are placed on rooftops for quick deliver of common products within a few minutes of ordering.

bigiain 12y ago
Hmmm, who needs FedEx? I'm now imagining a shipping container that get floated from China to $city stacked up top on a regular container ship, then without even unloading it from the ship, the roof slides back and the walls collapse, and a flock of disposable single-use drones launches out - delivering random manufactured crap directly to the purchaser bypassing the expensive first-world logistics chain...
- asynchronous13 12y ago
  That is a very cool idea! When you mentioned the shipping container, I was thinking about a heavy lifting helicopter that plucks an entire shipping container off the cargo ship and drops it on an 18 wheeler already on a highway (or on a train already in motion...). Bypassing the bottleneck at a port could save a lot of time and money, too.
- harshreality 12y ago
  Customs and domestic security nightmare. Random manufactured crap could range from things that the government doesn't like (drugs) to things that might be dangerous (enriched uranium) to things that are very bad (like weaponized anthrax or the fictional Fusarium spirale[1]). [1] http://mycorant.com/book-review-spiral-by-paul-mceuen/ http://mycorant.com/book-review-spiral-by-paul-mceuen/
  - shiven 12y ago
    Your last part sounds like one of Bruce Schneier's Movie Plot Terrorist Threats. Mainly in the sense that weaponized biologics (threat-du-jour: Ebola; Anthrax) could already be dispersed by consumer crap coming from anywhere in the world, eg. a sticky tape containing Anthrax spores sneaked into the CPU cooling-fan assembly plant and stuck inside the vent so that every time your CPU fan runs it spews out spores. For Ebola, you just mix a few drops of the bodily fluids of a patient who died of Ebola into one of those fancy tetra-pack coconut juice boxes using a few syringes and have instant Armageddon. All of these are purely fictional scenarios, of course, but hey the three letter government agencies need to scare the shit out of the public to get increases in their funding now don't they!?!

bigiain 12y ago

Hmmm, who needs FedEx? I'm now imagining a shipping container that get floated from China to $city stacked up top on a regular container ship, then without even unloading it from the ship, the roof slides back and the walls collapse, and a flock of disposable single-use drones launches out - delivering random manufactured crap directly to the purchaser bypassing the expensive first-world logistics chain...

asynchronous13 12y ago
That is a very cool idea! When you mentioned the shipping container, I was thinking about a heavy lifting helicopter that plucks an entire shipping container off the cargo ship and drops it on an 18 wheeler already on a highway (or on a train already in motion...). Bypassing the bottleneck at a port could save a lot of time and money, too.
harshreality 12y ago
Customs and domestic security nightmare. Random manufactured crap could range from things that the government doesn't like (drugs) to things that might be dangerous (enriched uranium) to things that are very bad (like weaponized anthrax or the fictional Fusarium spirale[1]). [1] http://mycorant.com/book-review-spiral-by-paul-mceuen/ http://mycorant.com/book-review-spiral-by-paul-mceuen/
- shiven 12y ago
  Your last part sounds like one of Bruce Schneier's Movie Plot Terrorist Threats. Mainly in the sense that weaponized biologics (threat-du-jour: Ebola; Anthrax) could already be dispersed by consumer crap coming from anywhere in the world, eg. a sticky tape containing Anthrax spores sneaked into the CPU cooling-fan assembly plant and stuck inside the vent so that every time your CPU fan runs it spews out spores. For Ebola, you just mix a few drops of the bodily fluids of a patient who died of Ebola into one of those fancy tetra-pack coconut juice boxes using a few syringes and have instant Armageddon. All of these are purely fictional scenarios, of course, but hey the three letter government agencies need to scare the shit out of the public to get increases in their funding now don't they!?!