Amazon’s Prime Air

In case you haven’t already heard, Amazon unveiled its newest innovation yesterday, Delivery Drones, which they plan on using for making deliveries to those who are in close proximity of their fulfillment centers. They say that with this new technology, it could reduce shipping times to a mere 30 minutes after an order is placed. Google tends to get all the praise for being one of the best evolving companies in the technological market, but I believe Amazon deserves some recognition as well given this new news. Starting off from originally selling books, to increasing their global presence, to building Amazon Web Services, to creating their own tablet, to constructing Delivery Drones, they never seem to stop on just one idea.

However, even though I find this new innovation to be absolutely amazing, I find it hard to believe Jeff Bezos’s claim that “Amazon drones could be in operation by 2015.” While I don’t doubt Amazon’s ambition towards delivering this new technology, I do doubt the legal processes and procedures that would need to be settled before seeing Delivery Drones implemented in the world. After all, since most drones have only been highlighted as being a military technology, it’s very difficult to believe that we would be seeing this technology being used for commercial purposes any time soon. Additionally, commercial drone certification “isn’t even slated to begin until 2020. (Source)

Some people have expressed their negative reception towards Amazon’s drones, saying “Delivery drones can explode, or run into things. Unmanned drones are guided by not-always reliable GPS and equipped with metal-bladed propellers and batteries that may be prone to combustion. They’re likely to be impossible to use in many urban areas.” Other concerns are that the drones will interfere with commercial airlines by possibly getting sucked into an airplane’s engine. (Source) Not to mention, I’m sure this type of technology opens the door for plenty of privacy issues, with possibly advertising companies wanting to generate more relevant advertisements based on what people do daily. Similar to the criticism that was met from Google Glass’s pay-per-gaze, I expect we might see close to the same arguments about commercial drones.  However, with drones entering the commercial market, it opens up the door for a lot of positive outcomes as well. There is of course Amazon’s delivery drones, but possibly drones to monitor traffic easier, monitor weather in close proximities, or even monitor possible crime. We obviously won’t be seeing this for many more years to come, but at least Amazon started the market in the right direction.

In my own personal opinion, I am very excited to see this type of technology used for deliveries, but I still remain skeptical about what doors commercial drones could open. Would there be laws in place that would forbid surveillance, or prevent drones being used for unethical purposes? Then again, maybe there are certain, not too invasive methods for using drones where surveillance could be a good thing. It’s too early to tell as of this moment I think, but as we have discussed numerous times in class, it would be interesting to see the how the different standards develop on this new technology.