Amazon’s Drone Army ⇥ cbsnews.com

From the 60 Minutes transcript:

Jeff Bezos: These are effectively drones but there’s no reason that they can’t be used as delivery vehicles. Take a look up here so I can show you how it works.

Charlie Rose: All right. We’re talking about delivery here?

Jeff Bezos: We’re talking about delivery. There’s an item going into the vehicle. I know this looks like science fiction. It’s not.

Charlie Rose: Wow!

Jeff Bezos: This is early. This is still…years away. It drops the package.

Charlie Rose: And there’s the package.

Jeff Bezos: You come and get your package. And we can do half hour delivery.

Charlie Rose: Half hour delivery?

Jeff Bezos: Half hour delivery/and we can carry objects, we think, up to five pounds, which covers 86 percent of the items that we deliver.

I’m stunned; this is the future. If you had half-hour delivery for nearly anything you could order, can you imagine the possibilities of what you might order? I live centrally in my city, but I can’t find crème fraîche near me. What if I wake up and realize that I don’t have enough coffee for a party I’m hosting, and I already have a lot on my mind? What if my printer ran out of ink at 3:00 AM for an assignment I must hand in at 9:00?¹ The possibilities for this are fascinating.

There are loads of questions, obviously, about how such a scheme might work. But, as Bezos notes in the interview, this is quite far in the future. I can’t help but admire Amazon’s innovation in these sorts of areas.

If you don’t want to watch the full 60 Minutes interview, you should check out Amazon’s promo page.