More Amazon drone fun.

Not directly book related, but indirectly related.

Amazon is, apparently, going for carrier pigeons -- or in this day and age, carrier drones -- to deliver their products. At first I thought it was just an elaborate joke, but no. Apparently I'll be able to get books shipped to my house by drones.

The science fiction nerd in me is screaming in happiness.

And there isn't really any other part of me. It's mostly all science fiction nerd.

And if a drone happens to fall through my roof or into my back yard, I want to keep it.

Video of Amazon Drones!

PS / Edit: I cannot for the life of me get the link to open in a new tab rather than over-riding this page. I give up.

/rage quit

The future is here! Flying robots will, any second now, be delivering your Christmas books, DVDs and gadgets to your door within 30 minutes of you ordering them, thanks to a new initiative announced by Amazon on CBS News' 60 Minutes on Sunday.

It's a brave new world, a whole new paradigm. Or so you'd think if you read most of the breathless coverage about the announcement, which will only get worse: expect a torrent of turgid think-pieces in the next 48 hours about who's going to get "disrupted" as a result of this latest shake-up – and what it means for the US's already beleaguered postal service.

[SNIP]

Bezos' neat trick has knocked several real stories about Amazon out of the way. Last week's Panorama investigation into Amazon's working and hiring practices, suggesting that the site's employees had an increased risk of mental illness, is the latest in a long line of pieces about the company's working conditions – zero-hour contracts, short breaks, and employees' every move tracked by internal systems. Amazon's drone debacle also moved discussion of its tax bill – another long-running controversy, sparked by the Guardian's revelation last year that the company had UK sales of £7bn but paid no UK corporation tax – to the margins. The technology giants – Amazon, Google, Microsoft et al – have have huge direct reach to audiences and customers, the money to hire swarms of PR and communications staff, and a technology press overwhelmingly happy to incredulously print almost every word, rather than to engage in the much harder task of actually holding them to account.