Cognitive Dissonance: On Drones

Cute little guy. Job-destroyers are mildly safer than human-destroyers, too, I'd imagine.

There is an uncomfortable feeling in my mind right now, the kind that I know signals a changing in my views: the amount of cognitive dissonance I'm feeling over that little drone in the picture above me tells me that soon, I'll be a drone proponent -- though still painfully aware of how badly the whole thing can go wrong.

A province in France is rolling out a program to have drones deliver mail and newspapers. I honestly never thought of using drones for delivery. I had a generally bleak outlook on them and thought they were only useful for spying on us, ruining lives, and assassinating dissenters. Yet now, there's a perfectly practical use in front of me: something simple, like parcel delivery.

For the first time, I hope that a drone program succeeds. If this works out, then sooner or later it means that I can have a drone pick up some spices from the next county over for dinner, or some sushi from a restaurant I particularly like. It means that maybe, when I need something from my house and I'm at work, I can just have a drone bring it to me.

I think I can live with that, despite that making me more comfortable with drones. At the same time, having any number of acceptable drones out makes it that much easier to hide unacceptable drones on the loose, and that much more okay with the idea of having those bad drones in the air.

It raises what I view to be an important question: do we humans know when to stop? Are we going to be able to say "parcel drones are good, but spying drones are bad, so let's do something about it" or are we just going to become apathetic and say "drones are alright"?

If this is the way drones are going, simply doing an iota of manual labor for us, I don't particularly mind. But as Mad-Eye Moody once taught me, there's one thing you need to remember and stick to in times like this: CONSTANT VIGILANCE.

Even if they start off good, we must keep a wary on our drone filled horizons.

Though, there's also the hysterical chance that I just fell for an elaborate April Fool's day joke; though the articles started coming out 2-3 days ago on this one.

http://www.sfgate.com/technology/businessinsider/article/Drones-May-Soon-Deliver-Your-Newspaper-In-The-4398068.php