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

  • Meet Huck!

    A new member of the Berens family has arrived! We have been dogless for about a year and a half. I wrote about the death of Ace, one of our corgis, here. His corgi cousin Jodie followed him just a few weeks later. We still miss them. Good news! On Friday, we brought Huckleberry “Huck” Berens…

  • Flavors of Nerdery

    From Star Trek to Shakespeare, different kinds of reference create different experiences for fans.  The final two episodes of the just-completed fourth season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (SNW, on Paramount+) each contained exercises in extra levels of experience for fans, but they were of different flavors. In the season finale, “Tomorrow’s Enterprise”… Lieutenant Uhura (Celia Rose…

  • The Human Filter

    How to get around the volume problem with AI sales pitches. Spoiler Alert for Charles Dickens’ 1853 novel Bleak House (skip to the next paragraph if this is too soon). At the end of the book, the decades-long Jarndyce and Jarndycelawsuit that has taken up much of the plot finally resolves. However, in the process legal fees have sucked…

  • A Recipe for Digital Transformation

    Revisiting how my 9/11 experience proved that necessity is the mother of invention… I first shared this piece in 2023… it’s about how the 9/11/01 attacks created an immediate need for digital transformation. Since we observed the 25th anniversary of that horrible day this week, I thought it was a good moment to bring it…

  • AIs are Genies

    It’s time to rethink the metaphor of AIs as monsters out to eradicate or colonize us.  Artificial Intelligence is the subject of at least as much human fear and greed as it is of hope and altruism. Some of the dominant metaphors for where AI can go horribly wrong come from science fiction: the Skynet…

  • Can Colleges Change in Time?

    Douglas Belkin and Josh Ulick wrote an important piece in WSJ ($) this week: America’s Colleges Are Hurtling Toward an Enrollment Cliff. The subtitle makes the stakes more apparent: “Will the ‘demographic cliff’—the declining population of 18-year-olds—ease the brutal process? Depends where you go.” Overall, college enrollments are forecast to drop 13% over the next 15…

  • A Brief Rant About Political Fundraising Emails

    Survey after survey tells us that large percentages of Americans on both sides of the political fence are tired of the established parties and want alternatives. A lot of this has to do with policy differences, legislative gridlock, political polarization, and the 24-hour news cycle. But I think it also has to do with spam,…

  • Keyword: Litotes

    In language, a double negative and a positive are not the same thing.+ This piece is part of a “Keywords” series that I’ve slowly built over the history of The Dispatch. These keywords are tools that help me to think, lenses that let me see with clarity. Here’s one of my favorites. Mathematics and human language have different…

  • Keywords: Hedgehogs and Foxes (and AI, oh my!)

    What kind of thinker are you? Knowing the difference between when you’re a hedgehog & when you’re a fox can be empowering. The following piece is part of a “Keywords” series that I’ve slowly built over the history of The Dispatch. Before we start, though, I want to share that Claude was helpful developing my argument in a…

  • Is AI Slop Good for Brick and Mortar?

    Will untrustworthy AI products and advertising breathe new life into retail because that’s where trustable humans are?  It was spring. I walked the streets of New Delhi reckoning with an urgent Number Two and no place to deposit it. Public toilets, at least in that hood, seemed not a high municipal priority. Then, through gastrointestinal-distress-blurred…