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

  • Face: The Final Frontier

    A decade after Google Glass, are smart glasses finally becoming a thing? Although we’ve all had our individual journeys with the internet, the journey of the internet itself has been one of increasing intimacy. At first, we had to go somewhere else to get online: to a lab somewhere at a business or university. Then…

  • Why Don’t We Have This Already?—Streaming

    In a new thread about technologies and services that should already exist, I ask why—with all the data streamers have about us—it’s so hard to find something to watch together? I have long worried that Amazon thinks I’m crazy. More precisely, I worry that Amazon thinks I suffer from Dissociative Identity Disorder—a.k.a. the many faces…

  • Not-Safe-For-Work AI Deepfake Review

    I look at fake Pixar previews, allegedly “banned” dirty song recordings, and a disturbingly-convincing Star Trek blooper. How long can reality last?  Trigger Warning (yes, I said it): Humor is subjective and always at least a bit mean. Malice, as Lady Sneerwell says in Sheridan’s School for Scandal, is “the barb that makes wit stick.”* Also, anytime…

  • “Change Your Life” Productivity Tools & How to Use Them

    In our age of information overload, here—newly revised and updated—are the everyday tools I use to manage the chaos. As regular readers know, I think a lot about our limited attention and how to conserve it. One way to do this is to deal with the super-soaker of information squirting at your face all day, every…

  • Am I Becoming an iPhone Recluse?

    I started experiencing profound relief every night when I powered down my smartphone. Why is that? Overture: What follows is an atypical piece from me. It’s a lightly-edited journal entry that explores territory adjacent to “My Quest to be Whelmed” from a month ago.  Soundtrack: I’ve never suggested music to have playing when reading one…

  • Keyword: Satisficing

    There’s a difference between making “good enough” decisions and always trying to make the best decision, which is exhausting. This article is the fifth in my keywords thread, but you don’t need to read anything else to understand this one. Barry Schwartz, author of the useful book The Paradox of Choice, recently appeared on The Happiness Lab podcast to talk…

  • Off the Grid: Is it Possible?

    Until recently, evading some forms of digital surveillance was as easy as leaving your phone at home. That’s no longer the case. Last time, I shared a microfiction (1,000 words or less), a short science fiction story called The Ride about a CEO who needed to get closer to one of her board members, and the elaborate…

  • The Ride, a Microfiction

    Trix returns! When her CEO needs to chat with a privacy-protecting board member, Trix combines detective work with drones to find a way in. As regular readers already know, I’ve been experimenting with microfictions, short SF stories (1,000 words or less) that help me explore and illustrate aspects of how our lives might evolve within the technology…

  • My Quest to be Whelmed

    It’s hard to watch the news and harder to talk about it with people who might disagree. I’m overwhelmed. Are you? I’m a lucky guy. I have a happy marriage. I’m healthy. My wife is healthy. We live in a lovely suburb just remote enough that there’s not much crime, and we can still get…

  • Retro Futures and Who Counts as Human

    What lessons does a 1985 Isaac Asimov novel have to teach us about AI and algorithmic bias today?  After months of failed attempts and carting the book around the planet, I finished reading Yuval Noah Harari’s magnificent and challenging Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI. (Don’t take the word…