DRIVERLESS CAR SEX & CONDOMS VIA DRONE ....

Has Work Already Ended (and fun begun)?

London, 11 November 2024

Well. My head is spinning. In a good way. I’ve just come back from Kilkenny in Southern Ireland, speaking at the amazingly fun and interesting Kilkenomics festival, combining economics and comedy: sexy! And sex featured in many discussions….

Have a listen to today’s quickie News from Nowhere podcast covering (sorry for all of these sex puns) in which I recount the slightly eyebrow-raising allegation that the driverless cars Waymo, now very much in evidence in Southern California are seeing drivers with free time and limbs engaging in….other activities in the back of their cars.

I cannot verify this rumour, reader, but the tech entrepreneur Bobby Healy (pictured) who founded a drone delivery service called Manna.aero based in Dublin has confirmed that rather a lot of condoms get ordered around 11.pm at night.

This isn’t the most extraordinary aspect of Manna: Sex Sells after all. What is startling is the fact that his business now drops over 1,000 different items (some food, and, surprisingly, huge amounts of cups of pre-made coffee) by what is literally an airborne mobile phone: And it does so with no drivers saying on its website No delivery drivers means less cars on the road, resulting in less accidents.

That doesn’t mean Manna doesn’t have staff - like any growing sexy startup, it does. But Bobby is adamant that the app delivery revolution which began with Uber and continued with Doordash, Deliveroo etc will increasingly be delivered without humans.

Now that isn’t sexy to me: I want humans in the loop. I want humans to stay working. Bobby Healy has made me rethink my timeline for tech, and my optimism that one way or another, jobs will churn through: There really may be less people making deliveries and more people making out.. We shall see, folks.

If you’d like to find out more about the Workathon network, and meet and listen to leaders from all industries all over the world, drop a note to expert@workathon.io

See you soon.

Julia