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

  • 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…

  • Experience Stacks, Romantasy, and Harry Potter Fanfic

    A terrific NYT article explored a new genre of big books emerging from online fan fiction and missed a few things along the way. On Wednesday, August 20, The New York Times ($) ran a fascinating article: “Why Magic, Dragons and Explicit Sex Are in Bookstores Everywhere: Romantasy is propping up the fiction market. Thanks to a…

  • The Paradox of No Choice

    An odd VENN diagram of tariffs and AI are narrowing our choices as customers. Will this change be permanent? What are the implications for products and retailers? Note: this piece takes its title from Barry Schwartz’s famous and terrific book, The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less. In 1985, Wendy’s ran a memorable, minute-long spot,…

  • Escape the Digital Cocoon

    The only way to reduce polarization is to talk with people in real life. Here’s one way to do just that *and* find a seat at a coffee bar. A while back, I was thinking about how our behavior would change as augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) became common. (This still hasn’t happened.)…

  • The Distraction Button

    What Sydney Sweeney and Jeffrey Epstein have in common, plus why it’s time to revive the word “Ridiculous.” For the Dispatch readers who aren’t compulsive media watchers, a summary: a scandal of the week involves the actress Sydney Sweeney in a new ad campaign for American Eagle jeans. The campaign’s tag line is “Sydney Sweeney has great…

  • What Folks Are Missing About “South Park”

    The first episode of season 27 of the iconic animated series lit up media last week, but in the tumult over profane political satire pundits only got part of the picture. “Take heed, sirrah—the whip.”  —Lear to his Fool in Shakespeare’s King Lear   It was a terrific water cooler week for people who follow the…

  • AI Double Agents

    With all the talk about Agentic AI, there’s an important question that people aren’t asking: who are these agents working for? In last week’s main piece, I explored how Agentic AI will be bad for brands because, in a world where digital servants take over trivial everyday decisions, we human deciders will be less vulnerable to…