The onslaught of disruptive technologies has resulted in business and operating models being turned upside-down. This requires a shift in mindset. Invariably, change is difficult. We are all creatures of habit and subject to long-standing attitudes. Those of you who have been in business a long time will likely have built up some entrenched beliefs about what it takes to succeed. Some of these thoughts will always stand the test of time. But some old paradigms need to be rethought.

During the past year, I stopped responding to customer surveys, providing user feedback or, mostly, contributing product reviews. Sometimes I feel obligated—even eager—to provide this information. Who doesn’t like being asked his opinion? But, in researching media technologies as an anthropologist, I see these requests as part of a broader trend making home life bureaucratic.

As the essayist E.B. White once wrote, “Luck is not something you can mention in the presence of self-made men.” Some people are of course quick to acknowledge the good fortune they’ve enjoyed along their paths to the top. But White was surely correct that such people are in the minority. More commonly, successful people overestimate their responsibility for whatever successes they achieve.

Our Oct. 27, 2017, episode of QDL looked at Ford, autonomous cars, and changes to FDA compassionate use rules.

“Ford Plans $14B in Cost Cuts as Part of New CEO’s Strategy”

What self-driving cars want, and what people want from them, varies widely. Often these desires are at odds with each other. For instance, carmakers—and the designers of the software that will run autonomous vehicles—know that it’s safest if cars stay far away from each other. But traffic engineers know that if every car operated to ensure lots of surrounding space, local roads and highways alike would be clogged for miles, and nobody would get anywhere.

We cover a wide range of topics on QDL most weeks, but our latest episode, from Friday, Oct. 20, 2017, provided a steady drumbeat of technological detail. Here’s what we chatted about:

This photo shows the Milky Way (from the Latin via lactea), part of our galaxy as seen from Earth. It’s a barred spiral galaxy, essentially a flat disk of at least 100 billion stars. Our galaxy is just one of about 400 billion in the universe, only three of which can be seen by the naked eye. Which means almost everything we see unaided is part of our own Milky Way.