BradBerens.com
Thoughts about where our real and digital worlds collide.
-
Retro Futures: “Looker” (1981), Looking Back, Looking Forward
42 years ago, a murder mystery predicted digital twins and deep fakes: what did this howlingly bad movie get right and wrong? Writing science fiction is a what if? exercise that tells us a lot about the moment when the writer first posed the question. Looking at where those predictions went awry can help us to understand…
-
Retro futures and how they can help us to see what’s next (from 2018)
Science fiction ranging from Disneyland’s Tomorrowland to Star Wars and Star Trek and beyond contains lessons for how we got here and where we’re going. [Note: this piece originally ran on the Center’s website of February 14, 2018, but I strangely neglected to cross-post it here at the time. I have updated the now-defunct links…
-
Why Amazon Blew it Killing “Smile”
The country’s largest ecommerce company ended a program that donated 0.5% of eligible purchases to charities customers selected. This might have surprising negative consequences for Amazon’s brand. This week, Amazon announced that it was ending its “AmazonSmile” program that enabled customers to support charities with most purchases. The program will end on February 20th. I…
-
Retro Futures, ChatGPT, & More
In this short post, I dig into why a podcast about a teacher using (rather than banning) OpenAI’s ChatGPT program seemed eerily familiar… If you have a stack of dishes to do or face a 30 minute drive, then don’t miss the January 13th episode of Hard Fork a podcast from The New York Times…
-
Artisanal Crap
As generative AI makes first-pass creation faster and easier, an unintended consequence is that humans may become less able to make great things. Let me start by stipulating that generative AI (ChatGPT, DALL-E) will change how we do what we do, taking the heavy lifting off much human endeavor. This will be true whether it’s…
-
What’s Curious about Microsoft and OpenAI
It’s more than a flurry: we’re seeing a monsoon of articles about OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Microsoft’s proposed $10B investment in OpenAI, and how Microsoft would recoup that investment by getting 75% of OpenAI’s profits—of which there are currently none. (Nina Schick has a nice summary.) Even without that 75% of profits provision, this is a great…
-
CES, Paradigm Shifts, Spandrels, and Collateral Damage
What this week’s Consumer Electronics Show has to do with death of cursive writing in American schools, how to break down the elements of disruption, and more. I spent the week leading tours of the automotive hall at CES with my friends at StoryTech. (My favorite exhibit was the quietly transformative What3Words.) As we explored new Electric…
-
My 2022 in Books
There’s a special magic in reading books versus magazines, websites, emails, or newspapers. Here’s my journey across the dozens of books I read in 2022. If you’re looking for a good read, dive in! Happy New Year! The magic of books is like the magic of kissing. The infinite variety of kisses include the first…