Transformative Technologies

 

AR Drone RC Helicopter: Parrot AR.Drone 2.0 Quadricopter ‑ Green $299.99 - Brookstone RC Helicopter Parrot AR Drone Ships Free!

Parrot AR.Drone 2.0 Quadricopter for the iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad ‑ Orange/Yellow $299.99 - toysrus.com Free Shipping $79+!

note: a Parrot is made by A.R. Drone 2.0 and I asked for a demonstration about a year ago in the Portland Airport where I saw it being sold. They were around 300 dollars then. The lady took it off and flew it around passengers moving towards the security area there for boarding of their planes. It amazed me because it appeared that the people didn't even see it there because when there were too many people walking by she just hovered it in place with the four rotors spinning inside an enclosed plastic foam so it is actually safe to be near it horizontally there between 3 and 4 feet in altitude from the floor. So, people walked around it as if it was a rope fence like security guards often put up to create lanes of people. So, I'm not sure what it actually was registered in many people's minds during the demonstration. Likewise, when a drone of this kind is above you, you might just hear plane noise or a whirring sound but be basically unaware of any drone or camera technology nearby you vertically. So, most people aren't even aware of these kinds of technologies even if pictures or movies of them are being taken at the time.

Begin quote from page 28 from Time magazine February 11th 2013:

Flying a drone,  even a Parrot, makes you realize what a radically new and deeply strange technology drones are. A drone isn't just a tool: when you use it you see and act through it--- you inhabit it. It expands the reach of your body and senses in much the same way that the Internet expands your mind. The net expands our virtual presence; drones extend our physical presence. They are, along with 3D printing technology one of a handful of geniunely transformative technologies to emerge in the last 10 years."
end quote.

So, until people have actually "inhabited" a drone by flying one or seeing themselves, their friends, their children, their neighborhoods through the movie cameras of their own drones, it might be difficult to envision what all the fuss is actually about just like it was difficult or almost impossible to convey to people about what the virtual reality of the Internet was to people who hadn't  experienced it yet firsthand.

So, in some ways, both the internet and drones of air, land and sea are as big a change to human beings as the Wright brothers taking off at Kitty Hawk. Only this time we are a century later creating new breakthroughs. Could you have foreseen what would come from Kitty Hawk in 1903? In the same way can we really foresee what the internet and drones will bring to all our futures?