There are several new technologies that are the subject of much marketing, but not much forethought as to their impact, at least as consumer products. Here is a Luddite's view of a few of these with the full understanding that this horse is well out of the barn.

Small Drones

Every drone makes a fatal assumption -- an empty sky.

The skies are far from empty -- they are full of commercial aircraft, for one thing. Airspace is also becoming littered with other drones which are being guided by pilots of varying degrees of skill.

Drones are also handy tools for mischief. The same day I heard of small, inexpensive drones for personal enjoyment, I heard of a man who was using his camera-fitted drone to hover outside the windows of a medical building to spy on medical examinations. It must be the favorite birthday gift of every Peeping Tom. Long before seriously practical applications for these devices are developed, they will be weaponized. A bird can bring down an airliner; a drone can do it without the variability of accident. Walls, whether in Israel or on our southern border will be less effective -- this will necessitate "killer drones" that seek out and destroy drones with malevolent intent. I'm sure an arms race is well under way.

Their proliferation is staggering. Drone sales are expected to grow from 2.5 million this year to 7 million in 2020, according to report released this week by the Federal Aviation Administration.

Hobbyist sales will more than double from 1.9 million drones in 2016 to 4.3 million in 2020, the agency said. Meanwhile, business sales will triple over the period from 600,000 to 2.7 million.

Do we really need all these drones? Is this a wise consumer product?

Driverless Cars

A feeding frenzy for this questionable product is well underway by both auto and tech industries. 

Hyundai is one of 27 companies taking part in a consortium of automakers, component suppliers, insurers, and service providers working on autonomous driving. It’s a spinoff from the World Economic Forum, formed in May 2016.

Uber signed a prominent partnership with Volvo to purchase 100 vehicles modified for autonomous driving. Volvo agreed to sell Uber 100 XC90 SUVs, which is what the company is using for this self-driving launch.

A startup called Otto announced a few months ago that it was working on a kit that could turn a semi truck into a self-driving vehicle, and it’s just completed its first real-world test with the help of Anheuser-Busch.

Google's driverless car is called "Waymo", which sounds like some youthful slang for "a lot".

I thought lefties wanted to get cars off the road.

There are clear technical challenges to removing the driver that will take a long time to iron out. In addition, the potential liability for manufacturers and operators is crushing. A lot of people have been paid a lot of money by "soulless corporations" that have done damage to innocent citizens to further the corporation's own ends. Imagine this argument: "My loved one was mowed down by driverless car from a manufacturer that didn't even care enough to put a human in charge of what is clearly and forseeably a deadly weapon". Uh-oh. Speaking of deadly weapons -- why should terrorist organizations waste a good suicide bomber on an explosive-laden truck when a stolen or hacked driverless truck will do as well?

These vehicles will be much easier to hijack than one with a burly driver. I'm with the Teamsters on this one. There are approximately 3.5 million professional truck drivers in the United States, according to estimates by the American Trucking Association. The total number of people employed in the industry, including those in positions that do not entail driving, exceeds 8.7 million. Is this the answer to the question no one is asking? I'm not seeing the plus side for this equation.

Virtual Reality Headsets

Have we not done enough to numb our youth with violent video games? Do we have to make it even more real? Apparently one of the first uses of this device is for simulated sex. Presumably users would take care to ensure they are alone.

Despite intense hype, these headsets are not taking off as hoped. The high cost of a device that will be obsolete the next week, the lack of programming content and the unpleasant side-effects of headaches and vomiting have taken their toll. Still -- it's new, so there are those that must have it.

Personal Assistant Recorders

These devices sit in your home and listen for you to give it a command, such as "Alexa, what is a Luddite?" to which she replies "…a follower of a 19th century British activist named Ned Ludd who thought that destroying new machines would stop the industrial revolution". Alexa thereby saves you the abject drudgery of clicking on Dictionary.com and entering "Luddite" -- what a deal!

This is a device that listens for you to ask it to do something. The operative word here is "listen". Why would you put a full-time listening device in your home?

Devices to Control your Home

If you can remotely unlock your door, so can someone else. If you can lower the thermostat in your home, so can the government when it thinks you are using too much juice. My neighbor was setting up access to his home from another city. As he searched for the right frequency, he managed to open my garage door.

Do we really need this stuff? Is mere novelty enough?

As consumer products, these devices offer two things: convenience and newness. Americans worship at these twin altars.

Convenience is very important to us. People marvel when I tell them that most Europeans do not use clothes dryers -- they simply use too much expensive electricity to solve a problem that mere patience can handle. We have come to believe that appliances like this are a bare necessity; who hasn't seen a House Hunter's International show where some American will turn down a perfectly good apartment in Paris because it doesn't have a dishwasher? Apparently foreign adventure has its limits, at least for the modern sophisticate.

Newness is the currency of marketing -- if it's new, it must be better, so you must have it. People have been replacing perfectly good software with new crap for years. Consider your word processor of choice. It has bells and whistles you never use; in fact most users actually use 2 or 3 percent of the capability of their word processor. So why do you update it with something that is bigger, fatter, and slower when you will use the same 2 or 3 percent? Because it's new, of course. Refrigerators, televisions, mobile phones, and clothing are all subject to the same fallacy.

New products arise from the desires of the makers of those products. Maybe we should think before dancing to their tune.