Ulysse Sabbagh

The naysayers were out in force. “Even if the Feds Let Them Fly, Amazon’s Delivery Drones Are Still Nonsense,” bleated Wired‘s Marcus Wohlsen. Dan Lyons reacted to the piece with a condemnation of “the credibility of CBS and 60 Minutes,” again complaining that drone deliveries are “years away.” The Guardian‘s James Bell dismissed it as “little more than a publicity stunt,” and added: “what happens when next door’s kid decides to shoot the drone with his BB rifle?” And Slate called it “hot air” and compared it to an April Fool’s joke.

What is wrong with these people? Do they moonlight as stock analysts who only care about the next quarter’s results? Do they have no vision at all? Do they not care about anything unless it will directly interact with them tomorrow, or at the absolute latest, next year? They’re the same ilk who, I’m sure, claimed that credit cards would never work, that merchants would never adopt them, that people would not use them, that fraud would make their use untenable.

I fully agree with Jon Evans. People say it won’t happen. But can you now imagine a world where this kind of stuff does not exist? I’m not sure. It looks like it’s bound to happen. “Is it bad?” is the correct question, not “will it happen?”