BradBerens.com
Thoughts about where our real and digital worlds collide.
-
Are There Unpersuadable People?
In this election season when we’re all getting hundreds of daily messages attempting to persuade us, most aren’t effective. I return to earlier work about persuasion with new thoughts. I’ve been writing about persuasion for years, long before the birth of The Dispatch. Back in August of 2023, I tried to decant a lot of my…
-
Retro Futures: War Games
Can a 1983 movie thriller about computers and the military tell us anything about drone warfare today? In 1984, my lifelong friend Juliet and I were watching a then-recent movie, War Games, at my parents’ house. This was in the early years of home video. The first Blockbuster store had yet to open, and Tim Berners-Lee…
-
Experience Stacks and Travel Back
Returning to places you’ve been can reactivate old contexts and relationships in a special way. A quick word about Experience Stacks before we move on to our top story. Experience Stacks are the different contexts that a customer, user, or audience brings to a product or story. People improvisationally shift from context to context during experiences, which…
-
My Ozempic Journey: Packing Up
Sometimes, when you know a change is coming, the anticipation itself can create other sorts of change. Regular Dispatch readers might remember a few issues back—in Will Ozempic Kill Movie Theaters?—when I explored how the possibility of 10% of the U.S. population going onto GLP-1 weight-loss drugs like Ozempic might be the final nail in the collective coffin…
-
The Digital Cyrano
How realistic is the idea that an AI-driven “digital intimacy assistant” could help a shy man woo somebody he finds attractive? Last time, I shared a microfiction (1,000 words or less), a short science fiction story called Flyrt about Chris, a shy man, Roxy, the woman he finds attractive, and Cyr, a snarky, AI-powered “digital intimacy assistant”…
-
Flyrt, a Microfiction
Can an AI-powered digital intimacy assistant help a shy man finally talk with the woman of his dreams? CHRIS couldn’t tear his attention from Roxy. In the office complex cafeteria line, passing in the art-filled lobby, during the occasional shared elevator ride, he found the flash of her overheard wit, the sparkle of her eyes, the…