The Age of Amazon Air: Will Drones Dominate Delivery?

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By Chris Taylor2013-12-02 23:14:10 UTC

This post reflects the opinions of the author and not necessarily those of Mashable as a publication.

Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson's seminal cyberpunk novel of the near future, published in 1992, opens with what is easily the most memorable pizza delivery scene in world literature. The pizza in question has a ticking clock built into its box, counting down from 30 minutes.

If it isn't delivered in that time, the head of the Mafia (which runs the pizza franchise) will have to personally apologize to the customer. The delivery guy embarks on a series of thrilling, death-defying traffic-surfing stunts to get it there in time.

Stephenson has a pretty good track record when it comes to seeing the future — but not on this score, apparently. In the wake of Amazon Air, which promises to deliver packages within 30 minutes via quadrocopter, it seems readers of the future will smile at this quaint scene and ask: why didn't the Mafia simply deliver pizzas by drone?

See also: Not Just Killing Machines: Drones Can Save Lives, Too

Many questions remain about Amazon Air. While it isn't exactly vaporware, it is years away from landing on your front porch.

Jeff Bezos made it clear, when introducing the quadrocopter on 60 Minutes, that the biggest barrier to implementation is convincing the bureaucracy at the FAA that this system is safe. You may remember the FAA as the agency that took years to decide we could look at our Kindles during takeoff.

Amazon unveiled the 'copter as a surprise for Charlie Rose, an expert interviewer but hardly a veteran technology journalist. Rose didn't even get a live demonstration of the drone in action, just the same minute-long YouTube video the rest of us have been watching. You can easily discount the whole thing as a brilliant piece of Cyber Monday PR.

See also: Drones vs. Government: Who Owns America's Skies?

You could do that, but you'd be missing the point. First of all, this is a Jeff Bezos joint. I learned the dangers of betting against that guy in 1999, when he told me that Amazon would start to sell things other than books, and I argued back with extreme skepticism.

Bezos' Amazon Web Services runs a giant chunk of the Internet and is building a private cloud for the CIA. In his spare time, he runs a space tourism startup and the Washington Post .

Amazon Air wouldn't just be good advertising for the company. Running on electricity rather than petroleum, being driven by GPS rather than a human, the system would save Amazon millions of dollars a year. And that's not even considering the extra fees the company could levy for the service — if you're that desperate to get your doohickey within 30 minutes.

So we've got a clear corporate need, and a dictatorial, innovation-friendly leader with a track record of turning risky bets into reality. (Nobody thought Amazon Mechanical Turk would still be around eight years after its inception, either.) This, in short, is the best shot we've got at making drone delivery a real thing.

No, Amazon will not be making every delivery by drone. Not only is it limited by proximity to distribution centers, there are also a limited number of things that weigh under five pounds which you'd actually want to receive within 30 minutes of ordering. The service makes zero sense in dense urban settings. It makes more sense in remote, rural locations, and it'll be pretty good at finding you in the suburbs, too. Your mileage, quite literally, may vary.

No, Amazon Air won't replace UPS or Fedex. There are some packages that will always need a human to collect a signature, or take it back to the depot if you're not home. (Then again, who wouldn't want to stick around home for the 30 minutes it would take to see your package descend from the skies?)

Many of the oft-cited problems with drone delivery vanish the closer you examine them. Worried about the neighborhood kids shooting your package down and running off with it? It would be child's play for Amazon to include a GPS chip in the box and track it down wherever it is. Not to mention the fact that shooting down an aircraft that operates under the auspices of the FAA would fall under the category of federal crime, if not terrorism.

Skeet shooting this ain't.

There are bound to be wrinkles to iron out. Drones will occasionally deliver to the wrong address (as does the USPS). There will be the occasional crash (not even FedEx has a perfect record); that doesn't have to derail the entire program.

The fact is that the concept of drone delivery has the aura of historical inevitability, even if the much-hyped TacoCopter never materialized. Low-cost, easy to operate drones are everywhere. They're already keeping an eye on illegal hunting, tracking hurricanes, delivering textbooks; you can even find them patrolling the skies at Burning Man.

And yes, drones have already been used to deliver pizza — in the UK, at least.

The only question left to ponder may soon be: If your Amazon package doesn't arrive within 30 minutes, will Bezos call to apologize personally? Then we really will be living in a Snow Crash world.

Image: Amazon

Topics: amazon, Amazon Air Prime, Amazon Drone, Business, Drones, U.S.