SXSW Interactive: Interesting Times
At the opening keynote of SXSW Interactive in Ballroom D at the Austin Convention Center, Hugh Forrest, the easygoing President & Chief Programming Officer of SXSW, walked us through the usual round of thanks to volunteers and staff before addressing “the elephant in the room.” On screens flanking his sides, an image of that very animal in what sure enough looked like a room appeared. The elephant, said Forrest — prone to to slope his shoulders into sharp angles while speaking — was that the Austin Convention Center, constructed beginning in the late 80s and opening in the early 90s, would be another all-to-familiar Travis County victim of demolition, with destruction planned soon and a new center taking its place in two to three years. This was not enormous news, certainly not elephant-sized, though Forrest admitted he didn’t have definite plans about the outline of the festival for in the interim, and SXSW would have to be, as so many startups wishcast for themselves, nimble.
The screens then flipped to show a second, surprise other elephant (I believe it was titled “the REAL elephant in the room”), which Forrest acknowledged, correctly but obliquely, by stating that we are living in “interesting times.” He was more clear in then evoking SXSW’s commitment to diversity, an obvious rebuke to a presidential administration hellbent on monitoring, firing, and — as of this writing — arresting advocates of whatever Trump decides is illegal (read: anything he dislikes). The point is taken, though I’d argue this audience needed little convincing. The cadence of Interactive attendees is of a group that not only trusts institutional experts but have traveled to Austin during the busiest time of year to hear them speak solo or in panels about this great big world we are inheriting.
The average Interactive attendee, by my observation, is a different breed than the music equivalent (though there is overlap, inevitably), and is probably 30ish, male and white. I don’t have access to official demographics, but I was able to study a certain sort of “interactive,” a term I invented that, like “creative,” I’ll use to demarcate a bunch of people in one place with roughly the same goals — a slightly useful but also irritating taxonomy. Fashion is functional, save for some outfits on the nicer side of business casual. The peacocking and flashy fits you might associate with someone with something to sell — mostly in advertising — are largely absent. Instead, you have a kind of greish blur of youngish people, always on their phones. Going up the escalator to the fourth floor of the convention center, I looked around and witnessed that almost every single person, sitting, walking, and even behind a food stand, was staring at a tiny screen.
Throughout the conference, I heard talk of spaces, tracks, carousels, many mentions of scaling, stakeholders and tablestakes, but in room after room, the emphasis — even or especially in relation to AI — was humanity. This may have a lot to do with the fact that I work in the “healthcare space,” where automation is viewed as far insufficient to the care of a real life human provider. (A quick word on “spaces”: the term itself, “space,” in relation to a type of job or industry, ironically to me, only seems to take up space while adding nothing. It is fine to say you work in technology, or in healthcare, or in finance without adding this useless addendum. However, the amount of times I heard the word indicates it will not be going anywhere soon).
If the techno-optimism I witnessed at SXSW Interactive could power the planet, we could finally rest easy about our ever-warming world. Unfortunately, the globe continues to get hotter, and while we solely can’t blame SXSW-destined flights baring down on 78701 — cargo-laden with men in cargo shorts — it continues to be a problem. While tangentially discussing the big issues of our time, in many panels I was given a hopeful vision of a world that is only changing for the better, despite strong evidence to the contrary.
To return to the beginning, Forrest was there to introduce the opening keynote speaker Kasley Killam, a “social health expert” and author of The Art and Science of Connection: Why Social Health Is the Missing Key to Living Longer, Healthier, and Happier. She made the convincing if barely debatable case that social health, what she defines as “the dimension of overall health and well-being that comes from connection and community,” is massively important. “Whereas physical health is about your body and mental health is about your mind, social health is about your relationships,” she writes.
More eyebrow-raising is her contention that social health will have the same import as both physical and mental health in fifteen years, as in, will be advocated for directly in programs run by schools and employers (small talk trainings, one can imagine, or how long to hold a handshake). It was at this presentation where I first noticed the person who most may have needed to hear about anything social was assiduously typing at his laptop for what would constitute the entire keynote, switching over from some kind of slide deck to a document called “brainstorming ideas.” Would interactives be able to participate in one of the most important parts of interacting with another person, namely, listening? The track record would turn out to be mixed.
Later, my coworker suggested we go to the Museum of the Future House, “where the future lives” (presented by the Dubai Future Foundation). This is how the future went: after spotting a line around the block, and then a sign saying there was a separate and empty passage for badge-holders, coworker and I were led right inside to “Refik Anadol's newest AI installation, Earth Dreams.” Earth Dreams, according to text on the wall of the inside of the circular room where the exhibit was all blinking and seemed to grow, “draws from millions of photos of the natural world, satellite imagery and meteorological data. It applies generative AI models to animate these elements, crafting a visual symphony of art, technology and biology. This unique mixture of science and art highlights the beauty and complexity of the natural world, offering a deeply immersive encounter with the essence of our shared planet.” Unfortunately, especially, I imagine, for the people actually waiting in line to experience this thing, the “unique mix” was a visual toothpaste and orange juice — a jumbled pan-techno/naturalist vision of the world, burping color but also ugly and laden with a strange kind of lifelessness. Outside, it was too hot to stand in a long line for what I later heard were excellent chocolate samples.
The SHE Media Co-Lab, where I watched the panel “Voices of Resilience: Women Leaders in the Rare Diseases Community” moderated by Katie Couric, was the first time I had to reexamine one of my beloved priors — namely, that AI is ugly, functionally useless, confidently incorrect and beloved by most of the people I most despise. In the conversation, these women who either had a rare disease, had a loved one with a rare disease or spearheaded initiatives to treat and even cure rare diseases, spoke with guarded hopes for a near future where AI can crawl through massive amounts of data on medications, test cases and more to find connections between patients and cures that people simply cannot. AI was not the topic of the conversation, but like almost every panel I attended at Interactive, it was haunted by its robotic ghost.
Christina Miyake, one of the panelists, spoke about how vitamin B supplements, in her language, “reduce symptoms and explain intrafamilial variability” of a rare disease called TANGO 2. Pressed lightly by Couric (an excellent moderator who kept the conversation fluid but did not grandstand), Miyake admitted that this work, which will save lives, was thanks largely if not entirely to her research. If Miyake feels strongly about the positive implications of AI in her work, I really can no longer feel the knee-jerk (or many-kneed jerk) of revulsion I once did. I have a family connection with rare disease. My father has myelofibrosis, a rare blood cancer, and is currently on experimental medicine (which has so far proven pretty effective). I don’t expect a cure in his lifetime, but I’m willing to suspend technological disbelief if Dr. Miyake, who would know, is not as cynical as I was about this particular, dreamt-of usefulness of AI.
A less hopeful talk on health care, “Fast Forward to the Future of Medicine,” convened experts who labored to solve what we all know is a problem (“the health care system is broken”) with both techy and wonky solutions. Of special note, the panel featured Julie Yoo, a “General Partner on the Bio + Health team” at Andreessen Horowitz, a VC firm that is occasionally notorious. With several doctors and health care experts on the panel, the conversation turned high level very quickly. Yoo was one of the most jargony speakers I saw at Interactive, at one point referencing the “fintech rail” and making me feel like I had wandered into a graduate seminar as a college freshman. What was instantly illuminating, however, was when the panelists asked if anyone in the audience was happy with their health care provider, and I saw not one hand raised save for a weak little half-wave popping up from the first row (commit, sir!). It’s also worth noting that the attendees, like me, were probably supported by employer-provided health care of various mid- to high- levels of what passes for quality health insurance in this country.
Like an ice cream social after a standardized test, the Australia House east of I-35 convened a panel of more cheeky marketing and AI panelists for what was projected on a screen as “AI WONT [sic] STEAL YOUR JOB, BUT IT MIGHT STEAL OUR CREATIVITY.” The concern, and the highlight of the session, was when agencies utilized AI when creatives are sitting right there, and we watched several commercials including the uggo Coke Christmas ad from last year and several others that were rated by the panelists and audience as anything from essentially dogshit to clever — the panel takeaway being that the work of creatives really could be, but should not be, entrusted to AI.
A later keynote made the exact opposite point regarding employment, arguing that if you’re in an administrative assistant role or a few other AI-targeted occupations, AI might, in fact, take your job. Sandy Carter gave this talk, entitled “10 Myths Busted: The Real Impact of AI and Emerging Tech.” Presenting the case for AI as fostering rather than muting human creativity, Carter ran through a number of posi-core future prognostications including the less happy prediction that, yes, you may become unemployed due to technology famous for telling users to eat rocks...but AI will actually create more jobs in the aggregate, so we’ve got that going for us. Continuing the theme of better human living through technology, her new book is entitled AI First, Human Always.
We were shown a short animation featuring AI-generated kids and parents at Disney (world? land?) including not just a child with an uncanny whale-sized mouth apparently shrieking in delight at being in the Magic Kingdom, but where at one point he or one of his siblings(?) was flanked by a hovering hand connected to no one. Of her uses of AI, Carter spoke a bit about an AI program that transcribed phone messages into events on her calendar. She gave an example of a friend leaving a voicemail about going shopping, and the appointment, thanks to AI magic, then shows up with the time and the place in her schedule. Aside from the required specificity of leaving such a message (which could be done, I admit), I was later struck that one of her more pranky friends could suddenly stuff her calendar with invites to meet Mahatma Gandhi at Chili’s Too for an erotic foot massage at 4:16 p.m. (repeating hourly).
Carter is, I believe, honest in her enthusiasm, but even the title of her talk nods to concerns about AI. How many companies, thought leaders and stakeholders are earnestly pumped about a digital Jeeves, and how many are just trying to, understandably, adapt before being ground into dirt by a six-toed foot? A different panelist at another keynote said her son is in a hockey league and that their team has never won a game. Somehow she got the job to write the post-match emails to other parents, and she uses AI to create messaging more positive than she, as the mother of a loser, can muster. But isn’t it an important skill to internalize disappointment but to convey optimism (after all, it’s just a game)? And what about those of us who are on the receiving end of something AI-generated from a friend or colleague? Upon discovery of these shenanigans, isn’t it understandable to be offended that we aren’t worth that person’s time — that the four minutes it would take to communicate directly, without a robot surrogate, are ones they would rather spend, I dunno, checking in with their AI concierge what Tampa restaurant has the best fondue?
In a break from AI, a panel I attended called “How To Rise Above the Skepticism and Exhaustion of Today’s Consumer” spoke to some extremely relevant concerns about the barrage of information we’re forced to experience every day, and the alternatives to working with “brands” with less than zero accountability focused toward labor or the environment. Joe Hollier, co-creator of the Light Phone, described his product as a kind of antidote to data barrage. The latest, third version of Light Phone “...is a simple phone with a camera and some optional tools available. All of our tools are built around intentional use. Currently the available tools include an alarm, a timer, a calculator, a calendar, a directory, directions, notes/voice memo, and a simple music or podcast player. We will continue to roll out more utility oriented tools with ongoing software updates, always optionally and never pre-installed.”
It’s an interesting idea, but one that Hollier noted might be a difficult adjustment for those of us who rely on our phones for almost everything. A Jitterbug for millennials and Gen Z? What I did find more intriguing was that the other panelist, Hugh Francis, was working to make his company garden3d completely employee-owned. Furthermore, as they state on Instagram, “In 2023, we generated 60.02 metric tons of CO2e. We offset 150% of our emissions at $100/ton (way higher than the market average). By this math, we put $9003 toward projects that met our criteria for meaningful offset projects.” One of my optimistic beliefs is that companies owned by employees, with true “tablestakes,” feel more empowered to make efforts to positively influence the world around them and less apt to just blow hot air in the direction of diversity and sustainability.
I attended two other large keynotes — Issa Rae, and then Tom Morello interviewing John Fogerty. While both were fascinating looks into these people and the creative processes, it was around this time at the conference that I started to feel a strain of animus against other interactives. During the Morello and Fogerty conversation, I was barricaded in my seat by not just one but two men with their laptops open if not actively on the whole time. One of the two gentlemen had an unfortunate stale smell on him, and at one point his phone perked up with a robotic voice intoning “South by Southwest!” before he shut it off. I have no idea if the people at Interactive always come across as this busy, but they all provided a whiff of extra-compounding busyness, as if they were already harried but the strain of travel and conference-attending meant the work at home was simply piling up. I saw many people on phones in what seemed like heated conference with (one assumes) unhappy others on the receiving end; I heard one guy say, “...and if they say no,” assuming the worst in what is supposed to be one of the best places for a person like him. To paraphrase Killam from her keynote: "What's the point of just being busy, busy, busy...and then you die?"
At another panel featuring Simon Raymonde speaking openly about the end of his former band the Cocteau Twins and his relationship with his late father (topics of his book), I tried to listen but was distracted again and again by the constant flux of traffic both in and out of the session. Raymonde would be talking about working with Scott Walker, or about his bandmate kicking drugs, and some goof in a stupid hat would lean forward and noisily exit the room. Same thing at each keynote — every speaker was counter-scored by a tactile/technological chorus of coughing and sneezing (probably unpreventable) but also scores of phone sounds courtesy of people who either forgot to turn theirs off or couldn’t imagine theirs not being on. And, last thing, despite the preponderance of every kind of headphone available on the market today, folks are still walking around with their phones five inches from their faces, speaker on and bellowing.
My biggest takeaway from Interactive, however, is that optimism can be contagious (much like the diseases spraying out in Ballroom D). This festival about technology, again and again, tied its programming to the human, and to communal efforts to improve things. What was harder to shake is that Interactive exists mostly as a festival of insider innovation, set in a world that is becoming less tenable, and one that technology itself can not fix.
Efficiency, apps, synergy, connectivity — these are all things central and of concern to our lives in 2025, but amount to nibbling around the edges. We are given complex problems and expect complex solutions, but is it not true that a single healthcare provider in the form of Medicare for All would better serve interactives — and their less well-heeled neighbors in different zip codes — than another venture capital disruption? Is it also not true that while AI may not steal our jobs or creativity, there aren’t enough job protections for people in this de-uninionized, top-down country if a boss decides that, well, they might want to give your position to a robot? Is it not a little unsettling to champion human connectivity to a sea of phones? And finally, would it not be better to limit the use of AI, given its very real environmental cost, to important, vital work instead of mass producing boomer bait, FB-destined crustacean deities or movies featuring freaky simulacrums of disturbingly happy people?
I am aware that I am advocating for more of a political consciousness in a festival that is not, in the main, about politics. However, that second elephant is currently overspilling the room, and soon the house. The current administration, through its destruction of diversity, eliminating science funding and suppression of democratic dissent, is actively making the world a dumber, hotter, and more dangerous place. And there’s no update, app or technology that can guarantee we’ll make it out of the next four years as better people in a better world.
