The Drones are Coming! Hurry Up and Buy!

Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon has informed us that within a year or two we may well have the privilege of receiving packages under five pounds by way of automatic flying drones. Yes sir, request a product over the web and within perhaps as little as half an hour it could appear at your doorstep. Yeehawwww. Just whipping up that fruit compote and realize you're out of vanilla? This is just for you! Need some birth control pronto, with only minimal interruption at the love nest? Amazon Air Prime to the rescue! 

Once upon a time, the only thing a drone was good for was impregnating the queen bee, whose progeny kept the fruit trees fruiting, and the honey jars flowing, and come to think of it pretty much all of human agriculture afloat. Then THAT form of drone was translated into something large and mechanical and useful for exterminating wedding parties in Afghanistan, paradoxically losing its association with fertility. Now however the benefits of drones come to humble little ol' you and me! Because now, like everything that started out good and natural, the drone has been reached its final state of perfection, and has been transformed into an instrument of commerce and consumption!

Apparently the only thing standing in the way of drone delivery nirvana is those pesky government regs regarding low-flying aircraft and public safety. Aw who the heck cares? Kid playing on the jungle gym gets bombed by sack of organic sugar?  Hey it's a Darwinian world. Gust of wind hits drone, which snags a massive transmission wire, blacking out half a mid-sized city? Let it go! In general they look so cool, landing in the yard, like they're out of Mission Impossible. 

I'm even told that Bezos's proposed delivery method is going to be "very green." That is, because the drones will run on electricity, they're theoretically less polluting than delivery trucks. Color me skeptical. First of all, electricity comes from all sorts of sources, among them coal; now coal is about as green as a black bear's coat is blond. Second, dunno how many packages each one of these drones can carry, but I doubt it's that many. So sure, delivery to a half dozen houses would probably be "greener" than the pizza guy delivering the pizza to the same number of houses, but it ain't going to be "greener" than all of us waiting for a day or two to get what we ordered by way of a good-old-fashioned, big-ass truck. Those trucks may run on petroleum, but they also carry hundreds of packages. They're also driven by human beings, who sometimes say hi to you and smile, but hey, we all know those are going obsolete. Heck some of them even belong to unions.

Actually if we really wanted to make instant delivery into something green, why not hire folks to pedal rickshaws? It's just a thought. We could power the drivers on rice and dhal. Come to think of it, there were once a few places where this was done. Even within living memory. A country of hundreds of millions, if I recall, and with a civilization of some age and repute.

Mind you, I'm not saying the drone scheme is going to be unprofitable, though it may prove to be. I'm not going to insist that it's unsafe, though it probably is. I won't even claim it's uncool. I am however going to claim that the genius of the scheme (and it is genius) fits a general and insidious pattern of distraction. I am going to claim that its primary function is to serve as the propaganda of progress and to associate the Amazon name with it. In other words it's today's update of the Roman bread and circuses. Lost and lonely in suburbia? Don't have a job? That's okay, have your consumer soma delivered by drone. At least you got that! 

If you're a glutton for punishment, take a look at this article, on a slightly, but not all-that-different, subject. It really honestly comes within a whisker of telling us that the poor and downtrodden in these bright shining days of the modern financial super-state, ought to be content with their situation, because by golly they got some good programs on the tube, and by golly they can see them nice and clear on that really big screen that they bought at Walmart! 

"I know it seems like it's out of science fiction, but it isn't," says Bezos in the interview, which was aired on Sixty Minutes.  Well great. Listen I have news for you, Mr. Bezos. A whole lot of science fiction is really damned dystopian, and I don't use either of those d-words lightly. 

Thanks for making the world such an obviously better place, Mr. Bezos.

Thanks for injecting some balance and perspective into our lives. 

Thanks for reminding us that what really matters in life is power, speed, and convenience. 

Thanks for helping to make the automatic earth so much more than just a cool phrase in a Paul Simon song. 

Thanks for being out in front of the pack on the question of labor too, and who or what ought to be given labor: robots with no needs but only missions; or living, needy flesh. The second category is so yesterday. 

Thanks once again for harnessing the power of golly gee-whiz in the service of existential distraction. This especially helps us ignore the dying of natural world, and the relationship of that death to universal instantaneous gratification and conspicuous consumption, which after all we can do nothing about. 

By the way, I propose that--partly in honor of the Christmas season-- you name the first drone Gabriel, after the archangel of the annunciation, who was said to have informed Mary that she would give birth to a savior. Clearly we, too, are on the cusp of a new age, of what, we are not free to say. The mind however reels in an ecstasy of anticipation. The spirit rejoices in Amazon our groovy savior, whose messenger is landing soon in our very yards, delivering toothpaste and flip-flops.

Oh, just one more thing, Mr. Bezos, you might want to take a look at this. Clearly there are a few yahoos who might impede the glorious coming of the Amazonian Lord. Though maybe you can buy them off with a few free handgun deliveries.

HB

Till Saturday the 7th!