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

  • How Bad was Elon Musk’s Week REALLY?

    Regular readers know that I’ve been skeptically covering Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter (and other unhealthy decisions) for years. For both Musk admirers and detractors there has been a lot to follow lately: and… Analysis If you look at Tesla’s stock over the last 5 months, it resembles the EKG of a man with a bum ticker…

  • Are You Better Off…

    …than you were 97 days ago? Ronald Reagan’s 1980 question revisited. Last Monday, I posted “Are you better off than you were 91 days ago?” The vast majority of the friends who engaged said no. Today it is 97 days since Trump’s second inauguration. You have to be of a certain age or a U.S.…

  • Scammer Spotting: Little Tips and Big Worries

    Online scams are a $500B annual “industry.” Here are a few ways to protect yourself from being the next victim. There’s a thin line between paranoia and sensible precaution. When it comes to online scams, it’s hard to see the line because it’s squiggly, jagged, dotted, and looks like the EKG of somebody on a…

  • Adapt-amnesia, and Why it Matters

    We’re the most adaptable species on the planet, but then we forget that we adapted. That’s bad news for incumbent businesses today.  2025 Prolog: I’m still on the road, so this week I’m sharing a piece I wrote for the Center back in November of 2017. It’s where I first articulated one of my key ideas: Adapt-amnesia. What is adapt-amnesia?…

  • The Flip

    In today’s world of limitless information, stores, experts, and brands need to find new functions in order to avoid irrelevance. I’m traveling for business, so I hope you’ll indulge me and let me share a piece I wrote for The Center back in November of 2019 that I think holds up. I’ve updated links and fussily changed…

  • 3 Simple Rules to Make Email Suck Less

    Too many emails overwhelm us all the time, but we can stop the madness or at least slow it down! Here are easy ways to reduce email volume and information overload.  Articles, books, online courses, consultants, and infographics abound telling us how to make email a more effective tool. I just want less of it,…

  • Will AIs Ever Laugh?

    On jokes, AI, and troubles with The Turing Test. It’s the second laugh that interests me because it tells us something about what happens under the hood when we read or hear a joke. Recently, I picked up a terrific joke from an unlikely source: “My mother is over 100 and fit as a fiddle because…

  • Agentic AI Will Change Everything

    How realistic is the idea that AI-powered agents will change the way we work, play, and live? The answer: it’s already happening. Last time, I shared a microfiction (1,000 words or less), a short science fiction story called Piercing the AI Wall about an executive who had surrounded himself with a barrier of Agentic AIs that prevented…

  • Piercing the AI Wall, a Microfiction

    When an executive needs to reach a reclusive CEO who has AI agents protecting his privacy, it takes an analog approach to get through the AI wall. 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…

  • Liquid Behavior

    Companies launching new products and services would be wise to focus on their target customers existing behaviors and moving them. PROLOGUE, 2025: I wrote the article that follows back in 2017. It was the first time that I dug into something that I believe strongly: businesses and organizations focus too much on their products and not enough…