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

  • What comes after smartphones?

    With all the press and the inescapable ads for new iPhones, Samsung Galaxy, Google Pixel and other snazzy devices, it’s hard to think of the smart phone as a transitional technology. But it is. Here are three recent indicators: The Third Generation Apple Watch that was announced last month does not need to be anchored…

  • Brief Rant about Email: Change the Topic, Change the Subject Line

    Look, you’re busy. I know you’re busy. I’m busy too.  We’re all busy. But there’s one inviolable rule of email communications — the prime directive, the Federation’s highest law — and it’s simple. If you change the topic of an email thread, then you have to change the subject line too. That is, you have…

  • Car ownership is changing, not dying (yet)

    On Monday, Business Insider published an article with the headline, “Uber and Lyft could destroy car ownership in major cities.” It’s a provocative headline, but it misrepresents the carefully worded findings of a recent study by researchers at the University of Michigan, Texas A&M and Columbia. The study took shrewd advantage of a “natural experiment”…

  • Open Letter to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey: Please Cancel the President’s Accounts

    Dear Jack Dorsey, Please cancel U.S. President Donald J. Trump’s Twitter accounts– both the official @POTUS one and @RealDonaldTrump. Twitter does not have to persist in giving the president a platform where he lies in verifiable ways that responsible media outlets — real news — have detailed time and again. Twitter does not have to…

  • Liquid Behavior

    Anybody who has tried to lose weight, quit smoking, or train for a marathon knows that creating a new behavior or getting rid of an old one can be very, very challenging. But it’s not hard to pour a behavior from one container into another, and this has implications for anybody trying to launch a…

  • Smart Phones and Drained Brains

    As we use our mobile phones to do more and more things, we are paradoxically able to accomplish less— even when the phones are face down and turned off. My last column explored how smart glasses (“heads up display” or “HUDs”) will increase the amount of digital information we look at, with the ironic twist…

  • The Fall and Rise of the Visual Internet

    I’m pleased to announce that my role with the Center for the Digital Future at USC Annenberg has expanded, and I’m now the Chief Strategy Officer. This column is cross-posted from the Center’s website, and is the first of many regular pieces from me and my colleagues. And now, onto the column…  Bennett and I…

  • The New Skype for iPhone app SUUUUCKS

    Oh the frustration! I stupidly updated the Skype app on my iPhone 6, and now I’m trapped in a half-baked, “I want to be like Snapchat” social media hellhole where I can’t do the basic productivity things I used to be able to do on Skype effortlessly. Ability to see which of my contacts are…

  • WTF: How Quickly Will Reid Hoffman and Marc Pincus’ New Political Platform Get Hacked?

    I had mixed emotions as I read yesterday’s Recode story by Tony Romm about how LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman and Zynga founder Marc Pincus are creating a new political platform called “Win the Future” (shortened amusingly to “WTF”). On one hand, I agree with so much of what they want to achieve: the two WTF…

  • Delight and paradox in Jeff Rosenblum’s book ‘Friction’

    I’m delighted to share my first byline with The Drum, which is a review of “Friction” by my friends Jeff Rosenblum and Jordan Berg. Here are the first few paragraphs: Reading most business books is like watching the movie Groundhog Day, just without the funny bits. Such books bludgeon their readers with a single idea…