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Back from a week in Austin at SXSW: plug in, data dump, reflect
My colleague Luis, looking fresh out of The Matrix in his killer shades and black-on-black clothing moves through the crowd with ease. He is in his element, swimming with the cognoscenti, the wannabes, and the already-beens, searching for a connection. No one is immune to his penetrating gaze, probing questions, and limitless enthusiasm. It is 2:00 a.m. in Austin, and I am going to sleep in my hotel room. Yet I know for certain Luis is plugged in. How do I know? Foursquare told me so.
2:00 a.m., another night, I am on the move. I haven’t seen crowds this dense at this hour since I was last in New Orleans, before the flood (“antediluvian” as word geeks like to say). People are swaying to their own percolating rhythms, some digital, some analog, some chemical, and some ephemeral. The townies look at the students, the geeks look at the freaks. SXSW badges mark the easy prey for the locals the same way ATM signs announce easy cash for the punters.
It’s like Escape From New York
Later, Shannyn will say it was like Escape From New York; right now I just feel compelled to keep moving forward, seeking open paths between people, and focused on a single direction. Too many people, too few paths, no turning back.
I spot a line of PediCabs up ahead. The drivers all seem to be living in the same William Gibson novel, sharing secrets in an underground economy and plying their trade on the intoxicated, the forlorn, and the desperate. A driver says, “$25—because it’s a big hill.” Up we go. By the time we reach the big hill, the hotel is close enough to walk, but I make him go up it for the sheer pleasure of watching his effort and knowing he earned the money honestly.
On the plane from SEA to AUS, I met an Israeli woman who works for Microsoft envisioning the future of technology. Or so she said. I take everything at face value when confronted with the unimaginable. She is just one of many people I will meet who have digital cred and personal charm oozing from their pores. She carries an ancient Nokia flip phone and sends texts using the numeric keypad. This makes sense. We communicate in code.
I am in a session and the CEO of a firm called NeuroFocus (really, www.neurofocus.com) is showing a promo rap video called “Listen to Your Brain.” I am questioning whether he is reprogramming my mind in the process. My Israeli friend wonders the same. We stay for the session that follows, not caring about the content, our neurotransmitters likely overloaded anyway.
Drinking with ghosts
Parties bleed in and out of focus, and eventually it rains down hard. The cool kids online are already saying, “SXSW Interactive is dead.” Perhaps. But like clubs to which I will never belong and parties to which I am never invited, I am willing to spend time drinking with a ghost.
If this is a dead event, then perhaps we have all grown too jaded, too skeptical, too trusting in our own digital echoes. The digital age still needs vitality, friction, and warm bodies colliding with impunity on the dusty streets of cities. That’s why I am here, and that’s why you should be, too.