If the idea of swarms of delivery drones dropping packages all over our cities started out as a joke, for some reason the punchline hasn\u2019t landed yet. Amazon applied for a patent in 2015 for a command center, like a beehive, plopped into your city, which isn\u2019t a worrying metaphor at all. Google has its own program in the works, which at least for the moment involves delivering burritos. Again, if this is a joke, it\u2019s got a very long fuse.