Over the past few days, the Internet has been going nuts over Justin Bieber’s “Boyfriend” Mad Men The Hunger Games iPad 3 defects porn a new fast food start-up in San Francisco that would combine technological progress and the most important food of the past 1,000 years – tacos. Tacocopter arrived as a beta website proclaiming “One-click taco delivery in the Bay area” and millions of taco-loving technophiles – myself super duper included – shouted to the heavens, “When will this be in my city?!?!”
The answer, we now know, is NEVER. Turns out that the idea of random miniature helicopters flying around a major metropolitan city to deliver food isn’t exactly the safest or most cost-effective idea, despite how awesome it seems in my head. And, as Wired’s cyber sleuths determined, this is just another one of MIT grad Star Simpson’s hilarious pranks.
“I wouldn’t say it was ever considered a joke,” Simpson said of the site. “Quadcopters are fascinating, and I’m taken with the idea that the possibilities for using them in non-flying death robot contexts.”
Simpson and compadres Dustin Boyer and Scott Torborg created the Tacocopter site for a few reasons. “Partly it was so I would keep thinking about how to make something like this work, and partly it was to do the same for other people. A vision. Like what cyberpunk did for the Internet — mull the possibilities, give people things to think about,” Simpson said in an interview over AIM. “The other motivation is that we basically only hear about quadrotors in scary contexts, and I think it does give that fear and emotional tension a safe and hilarious outlet.”
In case you’re unfamiliar, Simpson is the same girl who showed up at Logan International Airport in Boston back in 2007, wearing a circuit board with lights, complete with loose wires and fake C4 because: “She said it was a piece of art and she wanted to stand out on career day.” So yeah, she an expert at defining hilarious.
Regardless, Tacocopter will remain just a far-off dream for many of us. For now, I’ll have to be content with listening to the most appropriate song ever written while I stare at this picture…