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Wing's delivery drones take flight for the first time in Virginia
Wing's drone delivery service is now live in Virginia. The Alphabet subsidiary is now delivering snacks and health care products to residents of Christiansburg, Virginia, after receiving approval from the government and teaming up with major players like FedEx and Walgreens. Wing says it's the first commercial drone delivery service in the US.
Earlier this year, Wing became one of the first drone operators to be certified as a commercial air carrier by the Federal Aviation Administration, allowing it to deliver goods to people who may live miles away and not in the drone operator's line of sight.
[...] The company says it hopes to replace deliveries that are typically made by car or truck in order to reduce the number of vehicles on the road. It also bills itself as a delivery service for people with limited mobility options. Wing promises deliveries within "minutes" of the orders being placed to customers who live in Christiansburg's "designated delivery zones." And there are no extra fees for the deliveries, a spokesperson said. (If you live in Christiansburg and are interested in opting in, click here to sign up for the waitlist.)
Also at: CNBC and DigitalTrends.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by pdfernhout on Sunday October 20 2019, @03:53PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Light_of_Other_Days [wikipedia.org]
"The wormhole technology is first used to send digital information via gamma rays, then developed further to transmit light waves. The media corporation that develops this advance can spy on anyone anywhere it chooses. ... When the technology is released to the general public, it effectively destroys all secrecy and privacy. The novel examines the philosophical issues that arise from the world's population (increasingly suffering from ecological and political disturbances) being aware that they could be under constant observation by anyone, or that they could observe anyone without their knowledge."
That page also lists several other stories with similar themes.
Also related non-fiction by David Brin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transparent_Society [wikipedia.org]
"The Transparent Society (1998) is a non-fiction book by the science-fiction author David Brin in which he forecasts social transparency and some degree of erosion of privacy, as it is overtaken by low-cost surveillance, communication and database technology, and proposes new institutions and practices that he believes would provide benefits that would more than compensate for lost privacy. The work first appeared as a magazine article by Brin in Wired in late 1996. In 2008, security expert Bruce Schneier called the transparent society concept a "myth" (a characterization Brin later rejected), claiming it ignores wide differences in the relative power of those who access information."
The biggest challenge of the 21st century: the irony of technologies of abundance used by scarcity-minded people.