BradBerens.com
Thoughts about where our real and digital worlds collide.

  • Should you look at your kid’s smartphone? Digital parenting tips #2

    (This is the second in a series of practical tips about parenting in the digital age.) My last column described conversations that parents should have before giving a kid that first smartphone. I held back talking about one important topic because it needs its own discussion: should you look at your kid’s phone? The short answer…

  • Have this talk before your kid gets a phone: digital parenting tips #1

    (This is the first in a series of practical tips about parenting in the digital age.) Parents of adolescents worry about when a kid should get her* first smartphone. It’s a legit worry. On the plus side, smartphones connect kids to a vast world of information, resources, entertainment, and community… and that’s the down side,…

  • Micropost: I’m featured in a Forbes piece

    I’m pleased to report that I’m featured in a new Forbes piece called, “50-Year Future Of The Office: What Will Workspaces Be Like In The Year 2069?” by Nigel Davies. Please take a look!

  • THIS is the kinder, gentler Uber?

    This week, the California legislature passed an important bill that could result in the reclassification of Uber and Lyft drivers as employees instead of contractors. The change might entitle drivers to minimum wage, benefits, collective bargaining, and a host of other knife-to-the-neck threats to the short-term survival of the ride-hailing companies that are, in the long term,…

  • Brad’s Smartphone Daydream: Multiple Modes

    I’m distractible. Easily. My iPhone is the worst (but far from the only*) temptation to wander away from what I should be thinking about.  In today’s New York Times, reporter Conor Dougherty explains how he lobotomized his phone—removing all social media, games, even the browser—in order to stay focused. I periodically do something similar, removing…

  • Anderson Cooper, Stephen Colbert, Great Stories & Terrible UX

    When friends from different corners of my life recommend the same thing, I pay attention. Years ago, within days, an arch feminist, lesbian, liberal arts friend and an arch conservative, straight, financier friend independently recommended Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan science fiction series.  This I gotta see. Bujold has been my favorite living SF writer ever…

  • Why Amazon made “The Boys”

    Amazon Prime Video’s new superhero satire is too niche to be a big hit, but it pieces into Amazon’s strategy of taking shrewd advantage of the blind spots of other businesses. As I write this sentence, I have watched six of the eight episodes of “The Boys”— the superhero series that Amazon released on Friday, June…

  • Am I B.L.U.E.? (Bored, Lonely, Uncomfortable…Ever)

    One reason there’s an obesity epidemic is that humans evolved in a world of caloric scarcity: getting enough food wasn’t easy for most of the population for most of human history. It still isn’t easy for many, many food-insecure people. However, the people who are food secure find themselves in an evolutionary conundrum: our instincts tell…

  • Does what we buy represent who we are?

    This week’s episode of the delightful NPR podcast “Hidden Brain,” “I Buy, Therefore I Am: How Brands Become Part Of Who We Are,” explores how the stories that companies tell about their products impact our lives and intertwine with our identities. In the podcast, host Shankar Vedantam interviews Wharton marketing professor Americus Reed about how branding…

  • The challenge of deepfakes

    The original Star Trek show from the 1960s has proved prescient again and again. Starfleet’s pocket communicators and slightly larger tricorders anticipated smartphones. Hospital beds today with their sensors and screens look a lot like the diagnostic beds in the Enterprise’s sickbay. We talk with Siri, Alexa, and other digital assistants the way the Enterprise crew…