There's a week left in 2014, but for much of America, the year in drones starts today. And that's scaring the bejeezus out of the Federal Aviation Administration.No doubt, thousands and thousands of teens and adults will have a drone sitting under their tree this morning and, no doubt, many of those people will have no idea what they're doing when they go fly it for the first time.For that reason, then, we can expect 2015 to be much like this year when it comes to drones, only magnified exponentially. This is the year that drones—not Predator drones, but little white plastic toys (OK, and lots of other variations on the little white plastic toy)—became a common topic of conversation. And they aren't going away anytime soon.
Many, many people will be getting one of these today. Image: Shutterstock
And file these under the probably not so great developments for the future of drones: Frat bros filmed their parties with drones (OK, this one was just kind of tacky). The National Parks Service banned drones outright—and, after the ban, someone went and crashed one into a lake in Yellowstone. Not one, but two drones (one on each coast) were blasted out of the sky with a shotgun. The FAA has done all it can to keep these out of the sky and, in doing so, has potentially made throwing a frisbee illegal. There are still privacy concerns. They've been used to smuggle drugs into prisons. The big ones are and will remain targeted killing and surveillance devices.The list goes on, but I'm going to stop it there. Because this is probably going to be the last year in history that one can even do a "The Year in Drones" article and actually do a reasonably thorough job of catching everything. Moving forward, trying to nail down "The Year In Drones" will be like trying to make a list of what everyone did with their smartphones or computers all year.Unless, of course, one of you who just got a drone for Christmas goes and does something colossally destructive or dangerous with it. So, yeah—please don't ruin it for the thousands of people out there who have turned the drone industry into one of the most exciting sectors in recent memory.
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