Robert V. Brazell is an American entrepreneur, investor, futurist, writer, innovator and executive. Brazell has founded, acquired, and invested in many recognized companies, including Idea Exchange, Blue Frogg, Delphi, Overstock.com (Founder and Founding Board Member until the company went public in 2002), LiveGlobalBid and VinIQ, Talos Partners, In-Store Broadcasting Network (IBN), and Medical Intelligence™. He dedicates his time to solving what he considers to be significant issues, while supporting and collaborating with people of vision, passion, and genius. Rob is the Co-Author of the book Idea Economy (1994) and has argued that the most needed innovation is innovation itself. He is an avid reader, deeply committed to exploration, and promotes rigorous thought and experience within interdisciplinary sciences. Rob enjoys most the outdoors, mountaineering, and intelligent, stimulating conversation. Rob is an avid traveler, collector, and animal lover.
Over the past several years, he had developed a passion for animal advocacy and contributed to several rescues. Rob is a proud parent of several beautiful furries that continue to provide him with sentient comfort and the rewards achievable only through preserving a life of another being.
I am Robert Brazell, and Words For a Friend is dedicated to all those who inspired me throughout my life. In our crazed dash into digital life, we have lost touch with much of the terrestrial experience for which we are designed. Our being longs for physical touch, storytelling, and a bridled expression of belonging and purpose. The new uncharted digital territory is both intoxicating and numbing. We have developed a type of multiple personality disorder, along with an insatiable appetite for synthetic acclamation and mimicry. As humans, we have entered hostile territory – a self-created space in which we are at high risk for failure as a species. Our universe did not intend us to have thousands, or even hundreds of “friends” with whom to share our every thought and location. Nor did the universe expect us to like and endorse one another at frenetic, exponentially accelerating rates. This self-replicating mechanism manufactures sameness rather than new thinking and innovation.
The “digital diabetes” is upon us, and we are in desperate need of a cure.