I was listening to Econtalk where Michael Eisenberg was the guest. He’s an Israeli venture capitalist. One of the techniques he discussed was “backcasting”. Essentially, he looks at a technology, determines the endpoint, and then works backward to determine the feasibility of the steps needed to get to the endpoint. He was using the example of driverless cars to show how the underlying technology needed to get to fully autonomous cars was still not there to expect a truly fully autonomous car in the near future. I thought it was neat, because I use a similar technique in writing. So, I may come up with a scene or an idea. Okay, what do I need to get to there?

Speaking of podcasts, on an episode of Words & Numbers, the hosts were musing about the downfall of Amazon. The harbinger of this was the degrading of the level of customer service. The hosts were musing that brands that fell in the past were often preceded by a degrading of the little things – cleanliness of the stores, friendliness of the employees, etc. It’s an interesting point, and I’ll have to bear in mind as I watch Amazon in the future.

And for something completely different, I’m kinda excited about Mossberg’s new auto shotgun. It looks like what I’ve been wanting in terms of styling and it looks like it may price under $1K. I’ll wait to see what some of the reviewers say, as well as seeing how one feels in my hands, but this may be a contender.