We have no one to blame but our selfies...

Well if you ever needed more proof that we're rapidly sliding towards annihilation at the hands, or cold metal gripping claws of the machines, then look no further. Because this:

I'm confused, does the drone fly into the wheels or something?

In many ways the best use of a time
machine might be to warn people in the
past about how disappointing the future is.

What do you mean so what? I mean, look at it. Ok, fine admittedly the picture isn't really clear, but if you clicked the link, and I know you didn't, you'd know that that thing is an autonomous drone that can lock on to a particular person and follow them around, keeping them in the shot the whole time. Yeah, it's a $2,500 selfie drone developed by a start-up thus combining everything that sucks about the 21st century into one, obnoxious, USB-rechargeable package. It's called a Skydio R1 and it's apparently designed for the rich narcissist who has everything. Like, literally everything else.

Here, watch this video of a jogger trying in vein to escape this thing. Mind you this isn't a cautionary tale, this is the company's own promotional video. Yeah, someone from marketing thought a neat way to showcase their flying camera was by having it pursue a women through the woods.

I'm sorry, is there a non-creepy application for this technology
or is it just a flying, quad-rotor stalking device?

"Holy shit, so this Terminator is going to  
hunt me down and-wait, did you say 16 
minutes? And you used up 10 explaining 
all this so...we're good then, right?"

She bobs, she weaves, she ninja flips over fallen trees, but nothing she does can shake the drone. It's sort of a grim portent of things to come. Of course, it's not perfect. Sure, like it doesn't feel pity or remorse and it absolutely will not stop until you are dead, but it will definitely stop when if runs out of battery, which happens about 16 minutes in. Also, it doesn't have a ton of memory. Oh, and like a hoverboard, it can't work on water because the rippling, reflective surface screws with its navigation. But give them five years, I'm sure they'll be handing down the last members of the human resistance with no trouble at all.

That's great. You know, if we were to be honest, I think we all kind of new that San Francisco's start-up tech culture would one day be our civilization's downfall, but they're not alone in their guilt. The blame has to lay at least partly on us, the masses, whose insatiable need for easier ways of taking pictures of ourselves without having to ask a stranger to do it, will prove to be our undoing.

A stick with a phone on the end of it just wasn't enough for us.
We had to push the technology farther, never, in our arrogance imagining
 that maybe, just maybe, the technology would one day push back...