If you’re anything like me, you have a hard time getting away from your desk during the day, even for biologically and physiologically important things like eating and … well … you know.
There are always things that have to be done: The next deal has to be made. The next engagement has to be finalized. The next client project has to be finished. The next email has to be read or written. The next blog post has to be drafted. The next book or short story has to be published. With all of those demands, who has time to take care of himself?
Don’t look now. But our troubles are over:
A chicken sandwich, donuts, hot coffee, Slurpees and candy were packed into a purpose-built container and carried autonomously by a Flirtey drone across two separate deliveries to a customer’s nearby home.
Whoa! This changes everything. Since my office is right down the street from a 7-Eleven — and since I have a really big window in my office — I can have the drone land right on my desk. And if 7-Eleven is flying stuff around, you know it won’t be long before Dunkin’ Donuts, Starbuck’s, Mickey D’s, and even a few of the more progressive (in the constructively forward-looking sense, NOT in the politically hysterical sense) pizza joints start zooming food around, clogging the skies with airborne aliments like the dyspeptic nightmare of George Jetson.
Kidding aside, I’m not the kind of guy who thinks all jobs ultimately will be performed by robots, computers, and myriad misanthropic machines. Regardless of the progressive view (in the politically hysterical sense, NOT in the constructively forward-looking sense) that computerization and mechanization will inevitably precipitate desolate joblessness and heinous, blanket misogyny, I take humankind to be more imaginatively resolute and resourcefully adaptive than that.
But you do have to wonder if we’ll ever reach the limits of convenience as a source of instigation, motivation. aspiration, or inspiration. If I already can have food flown to my desk, what’s next?
Today, the Slurpee. Tomorrow, perpetual ease!
I’m nuts for donuts. But I’m perfectly happy to pick up my own.
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Image by kimhyeri, courtesy of pixabay.com.