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.


  1. Can you tell I’m still a student? ↥︎