Jeff Bezos's Profile

I’d never heard of StoryCorps, and after reading this I’m definitely interested. This is an amazing effort and something that I’m certain future generations will be thankful for. As a fan of history, I’d be thrilled to have something similar from basically any time in the past. As I was reading, I was worried about diversity in their sample; only a small subset of the population would be able to find out about this program and then be willing to share their story. But programs like the Great Thanksgiving Listen seem to address that problem, and I hope they can continue to think of innovative ways to broaden their recorded experiences.

I’ve taken a couple of GA courses, and had no idea about their use of crowdsourcing in curriculum development. That’s pretty surprising. But I think it’s a fairly healthy model in their space, as I’d imagine that their customers would want the most current and interesting topics for classes; exactly the topics that developers would want to write a course on in their free time. I think that you’re right in the future challenge however, that to continue to expand and update their offerings for more basic and perhaps less interesting topics, crowdsourcing may not provide that solution. so it’ll be interesting to see if they can sustain their model as they start to bring more of this in-house.

I was surprised to hear that 3D printed components can be made with superior performance to and at a fraction of the weight of parts produced through traditional manufacturing methods. How is this actually accomplished? Is it a difference in the raw material inputs that go into the printer? Or does it have something to do with how the component is shaped by the printer? I’d also be interested in learning more about Carbon3D’s new printing method, and how it differs from the layering method of current 3D printers. And as Ford looks to integrate more AM in their manufacturing, I wonder where their competitors in the automotive industry are with this as well.

I thought this was really interesting. When we think of healthcare, we tend to think only of humans, but technological advancements in that space should certainly have benefits for animals as well. I definitely want to learn more about this and see what other applications of machine learning the industry discovers. I’d imagine another of our megatrends, additive manufacturing, is also disrupting pet healthcare just like human healthcare, so it would be interesting to hear about that as well.

I didn’t realize that the quality of 3D printed materials was on par with traditional materials production methods to the point that it could be used in these extreme use cases (hopefully that Marine F-35 with the 3D printed bumper wasn’t the one that crashed last month). I need to learn more about the raw materials that have to go along with the printers in these processes, but it seems like a huge advantage for deployed forces. Very interesting, especially in light of the issues with government acquisition and production that we’ve discussed.

This is really interesting. Although for some reason, people still seem to have an expectation of privacy when they post on a public forum, I think you’ll find agreement that Facebook should be able to examine public posts. The question of whether they should look at private messages is another issue, but if they do it right, transparent with a clear purpose of public safety, I don’t think there’d be a huge pushback. Personally, I feel that the potential benefits here are huge and outweigh the privacy concerns.