Technology Endangers Reality (again)

To put the situation is as blunt language as possible, if you build hobby drones so easy to use that any idiot can fly them, who do you think will be your biggest customer base? As BBC News reported early this morning, it looks like, when it comes to the current massive fire in San Bernadino County, such customers are taking a really bad situation and making it even worse. As one report on the fire (quoted by the BBC) put it, those drones"pose a major safety threat to firefighting pilots and firefighters." The result documented in this report was that helicopters that were supposed to be providing water drops had to stay grounded until the drones were out of their path of approach and drop. This matter is being investigated, but it smacks of our new mindless generation thinking only of attracting attention with YouTube uploads, rather than of the real priority of first containing the massive fire and then extinguishing it. Even Peter George (the author of the book on which the Dr. Strangelove movie was based) could not have dreamed up such idiocy for his fiction,;and now we have to contend with it in the real world.