>> if he is right, one day, drones will be everywhere. chris anderson started playing around with robots with his kids. his company manufactures self flying planes. his flight to ceo has been anything but direct. he has been a punk rocker. a particle physicist. a journalist. editor of "wired" magazine. a three-time author joining me today is chris anderson. thank you for joining us. >> thank you.

>> i would love to hear about the day when you started playing around with robots. >> it was a big day. five kids. my origins were as a scientist. my wife is a scientist. we hoped someday our kids would be excited by science and technology. so far no luck, but we keep trying. one weekend, i was the editor of "wired." these products would come in. if you promised to review them, you could take it home. we built a robot. when you are done, you get this tripod that rolls slowly. the kids are like, you have to be kidding. >> they were not impressed. >> we have seen transformers. i flew a plane into the tree.

humiliating. i had to buy them ice cream. i'm thinking, what could have been better? what if the robot is flying the plane? i literally googled "flying robot" and the first result was drone. i said kids, we are going to build a lego autopilot. we put together these bits of plastic. sensors, processors. we stuck it in a plane. the next weekend come we flew it and it almost flew. the kids lost interest. >> what year was this? >> 2007. >> this was before drones were cool. >> something had happened that moment. i got chills. it should not be possible for us to build this.

this hardware renaissance is all starting in 2007. the gut is the chips, the processors. they were being made by the millions. the reason regular people were able to do things like drones is the essential enabling technologies were now available to everybody. the question was, what are we going to do with them? >> by drones you mean something that has its own brain. >> exactly. drones are aircraft that fly themselves. you can if you want to manually control them, but you don't have to. what that is is essentially a flying robot. you do not need skill. >> once you just said, we were going to do this, how did you start?

>> this is about 2009. i am like, here is my prototype. now i need to buy these parts. i met jack ma. the founder of alibaba. in 1997 in hong kong. i am like, this is where you buy your parts. i need to buy some motors. i picked from the menu. 10 minutes later, a crate shows up. there are 5000 parts made to my custom spec. i was stunned. i got chills that i had gotten robots in china to work for me. >> how did you go from journalist to drone company ceo? >> after i started the community and it takes off. people started talking about doing things together. designing drones.

the software, hardware, etc. initially, i started putting parts into cardboard pizza boxes with my children. that did not work well. it was clear it had to be like a real company. i invited the smartest guy on the site and said, you want to start a company with me? he said, sure. initially, he was 19. just graduated from high school. by the time we sued the company, he was maybe 20 or 21. in 2012, he had been doing it for a couple of years. the company was doing like $5 million in revenues. i realized he had built a real company with his friends, many of them from tijuana. i was like, it is amazing. it is ready to go to the next stage. we raised the venture capital ground, i quit my job and took over as ceo.

>> how likely is it drones will be delivering my amazon package? ♪

>> what is the mission of 3-d robotics? >> to create a leading platform. the reason is to put it in the hands of regular people. >> what do you make? >> drones, autopilots. we make software. by in large, we make a platform. >> what are your drones capable of? >> that is the exciting part. the drones started by being able to fly on their own. the big driver is putting go pros in the air, getting video. to sweep around, capture your life the way hollywood directors do without any skills. for me, that is what drones can do with

video. in the commercial domain, to be able to map the world and digitize surroundings. we can scan any building anywhere. turn it into a 3-d model. >> what industries will drones revolutionize? >> it is a consumer revolution and it will begin to be a commercial revolution as well. one industry is agriculture. minimizing chemical use and farms. construction is another one. we can only manage what we can measure. how do you digitize the workflow for construction? the answer is use drones to do a scan and turn them into something that can be put back into the digital workflow and so you can see the progress of construction, the deviation. the changes from day to day. without it even being there.

>> what is the coolest thing you have seen a drone do? >> there is a long list. >> choose one. >> one is a follow me function. as you bike or ski or whatever, the drone follows you. to automatically capture this moment. when you are done, push a button and it flies home. >> what do you make of the interest in google, facebook, and amazon? >> amazon is interested in drone delivery. google is interested in a number of things. i think both of them are thrilling. they are great technology companies with deep pockets. this is the classic swords to plowshares moment. with the hope that the positive uses will drown out the old military uses. the amazon video was the first

time people thought of them in a nonmilitary context. >> how likely is it that they will deliver amazon packages? >> to your home, that is a ways off. >> how long? >> a decade. delivering to the center, where you could pick up the package. warehouse to warehouse, we can do that today. rural areas is easy. once you get delivering to a front doorstep, that is a little hard. we could start to get the next generation of mailboxes where certain homes end up with well-defined machine-readable delivery boxes. >> you are saying this is going to happen. maybe it is a decade out but it will happen. >> it is happening now in limited ways. dhl has an experiment in germany where they are delivering pharmaceuticals to an island. we will see it happening in

places with small, high-value packages. >> is there any reason it will not happen? >> regulations. in the united states it is not legal. >> the faa is considering changing the rules. how are those conversations going? >> they are going. the mandate is the safety of the national airspace. it was designed around manned aircraft. large aircraft. human pilots and passengers. what we have is a different kind of problem. these are small vehicles. drones are so small, flying so low and so smart, they can essentially navigate themselves. we do not need air traffic control. we are arguing for a sandbox. tell us what altitude, distance, weight, and speed.

what areas they are allowed to fly in and then create this open spectrum, open airspace. where the technology industry can innovate with minimal regulations. >> how safe are they and how much safer are they going to be in the future? >> the safety has to do with the size. if it is the size of your hand, even if it were to fall out of the sky, it is lighter than a bird. it is intrinsically safe. if it hit your house, it would not do any damage. if it hit you, it wouldn't do much. the other safety measure is technological. these things are smart. they do not fall asleep or not texting. they are not distracted. they know where they are at all times. when robots are done right, they are safer than humans. >> how about google's operation? have you taken a close look at it? >> google went with an airplane model, good for long distances. amazon with a helicopter model,

for short distances. both have their place. the google one is very smart. it has the ability to use aerodynamics to travel for maybe even hundreds of miles. it is difficult to hover in place and dangle a package. i love the fact that google and amazon are doing this with different approaches. you cannot ask for two better companies. >> does amazon or google win? is there a place for both of them? >> there is a place for both of them. >> facebook is buying drone companies as well. >> google has bought a drone company to compete with connecting the developing world. there you are competing with

balloons. their natural instinct is to float. a drone's instinct is to fall. the great thing about the drones is they can stay in one place while the balloons float around with the wind. there is a case for both of them. >> do you see these companies on a collision course? >> no, this is complementary. it is the beginning of the drone age. there is room for everbody. >> how omnipresent will drones be in the future? >> they will be in farms, you will see drones over cities. maybe there will be police drones, maybe they will be doing delivery. >> how will they change our lives? >> how does google street view change your life? you can see the world around you.

you can see it from air level as well. to get that same notion of simultaneous information about the world around us, we can see real-time high-resolution data. >> how worried should we be about robots taking our jobs? a step further, human extinction? >> you went there. >> i went there. >> these are by and large doing jobs that are not being done at all. >> there is the ups guy taking the package. >> that is a ways off. ups is good at what they do. when it comes to drones, they are doing jobs that are not being done. robots are good at doing jobs that are dull, dirty, and dangerous. jobs people shouldn't or do not want to do. >> how much will this cost? is it economical for a farmer to have multiple drones flying over his crops? >> today they cost $750.

you might not even buy one, just the data. >> will robots ever be able to feel? >> there are other kinds of intelligence. the internet is much better than us at many things. perhaps it is already intelligent on some level we cannot define. the singularity may have happened, not just in a way we can measure. >> what about emotional intelligence? will computers ever have emotions? >> i don't know. yes. depends on how you define it. >> should we be scared? >> i assume it will empower us but we will see. >> what do you want to do with 3-d robotics?

>> make these things as easily as possible. if we can put these in the hands of regular people, we will have won. >> google and facebook have been snapping up companies. have they tried to buy you? >> we talk to everybody. >> is selling what you want to do? >> we haven't thought about it. >> what do you prefer, being a journalist or ceo? ♪

>> you started off studying physics and quantum mechanics. >> i thought it was exciting. i wanted to study it after failing out of college and doing punk rock. it was a change. i hit a dead end. the golden age of physics was over. basically everybody went to wall street.

>> and you became a journalist. >> my parents were journalists and i had promised i would never do that. >> you worked at two journals, "nature" and "science." you went on to "the economist." and then "wired." editor in chief, 2001. just as the bubble -- >> the best time, though it did not feel that way at the moment. my career makes no sense. every step makes perfect sense. at "the economist," i said, i want to start on internet coverage. that started me on the path of chronicling this remarkable moment in our history. in 2001, they called me and said, would you like to edit "wired?" i said, absolutely.

it changed my life. >> was it depressing? >> super depressing. 2001, a year after the dotcom implosion. there was a lot of interest in seeing it go away, not just because of the financial crash but because it was threatening to industries. i was betting they were all wrong. i was betting the bubble had been a stock market phenomena, not a technology hoax. the internet had just started, it was as big as everyone thought and it was real. i moved here in the worst of all times. i was sucky as an editor for 18 months. the second thing, it was a great time to hire talent. all the smart people had come during the bubble. they were available. once i did start to get

traction, my -- >> what do you prefer, being a journalist or ceo? >> they are quite similar. running a magazine, we shipped a product every month. websites, web stories. a team of about the same size. took ideas and packaged them into a product. it is more similar than you think. the difference is that our factories were printing and now they make drones. >> what is the myth of chris anderson and the reality? >> i'm lucky to be at the right place at the right time. i failed out of college. didn't do particularly well in school. no particular genius, i was just lucky to be here at the birth of the internet, at silicon valley at the right time. if i have a talent, it is connecting the dots. i have been privileged to see the dots early on. good enough to see where we were going. >> you have written three books.

will we see another? >> i am busy. i don't think you can run a company and write a book at the same time. >> of the things you have done, what is the most fun? what you enjoy? >> every friday, we fly. we have an open house. people in the community come together and show what they are doing. every friday, my jaw is on the floor. e-mails and spreadsheets all week. then on fridays, i see drones do things i have never seen. it is as amazing as it was in 2007. >> what is next for you? >> more drones, bigger company. getting more people to experience what i have been lucky enough to experience. >> how do you want to be remembered? >> that i helped start an industry that changed the world. >> chris anderson, ceo and founder of 3-d robotics. thank you so much. >> thank you. ♪

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i'm thinking roast beef. want to get lunch? get the fastest wifi hotspots and more coverage on the go than any other provider. xfinity, the future of awesome. >> he has been called the king of techtopia. peter thiel is one of silicon valley's most audacious and contrarian investors. he made his name founding paypal and funding facebook. he is now is backing rocket ships, dna manipulation, meat grown in labs, and a start-up island off the coast. he has paid kids to skip college and start companies instead, in hopes of building a better future, faster. and building flying cars along the way. joining me is the bold and controversial venture capitalist and now the author of a new book, "zero to one," peter