SXSW 2025 unveils a profound technological convergence where innovation across space exploration, quantum computing, and AI isn’t just creating more powerful tools, but fundamentally expanding the canvas of human creativity and potential.
At SXSW’s final day, technology transcended science fiction as bionic limbs that feel, space imagery that connects us, and quantum computing that may unlock nature’s deepest secrets reminded us that our future isn’t just about what these tools can do—but how they’ll transform what it means to be human.
On Day 4 of SXSW 2025, I retreated to my hotel room to watch keynotes about AI workplace transformation and user-controlled social media, discovering how tomorrow’s technology needs human-centered thinking to truly succeed.
The robots are coming—for real this time—as Amy Webb unveils how “Living Intelligence” is finally teaching clumsy machines to navigate our messy human world, while Europe wonders if America’s race to market might be missing something important: the human touch.
SXSW 2025 kicks off with a focus on hard sciences, revealing how Small Language Models, quantum computing, and robotics are converging to reshape medicine, research, and everyday life—though some technologies show more immediate promise than others.
In 2019, the ETC Press published Pamela McCorduck’s book, THIS COULD BE IMPORTANT. Here, I’m releasing clips of our conversation about her life as one of the early science + technology writers.
A compendium of what I’ve learned in my twenty-five years navigating SXSW Interactive, the greatest show on earth.
As the nation tried to collect itself in the hours, minutes, and days after the terrorist attacks, our president rightfully spent a great deal of time and energy reassuring the public. What I didn’t believe, though, was the insistence that we could adequately monitor digital communications in order to find out if there were looming threats.
Lately I’ve been asking myself a simple question: “What’s next?” I go through these moments of self reflection as I near the end of a large project. In this case, I’m in the final stages of rewriting Dungeons & Dreamers after several years of on-again/off-again work with my friend and co-author John Borland. The book is […]
In 2009, the South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive coordinators decided to carve out a corner of the conference where those people interested in start-ups, emerging technology, and entrepreneurship could gather. At the time, this wasn’t necessarily a popular move. For years the conference focused on emerging technologies, media, and creative endeavors. The thought of turning […]
Douglass Engelbart passed away today. You probably don’t know his name but you should. He invented the computer mouse. He helped develop hypertext (those hyperlink thingies, for instance) networked computing, and pushed forward the field of human-computer interaction (that thing that helps make your computers work a little better for you.) He decided when he […]
Ask any college student and they will tell you this: Group work sucks. The reason: In a group of four people, the workload generally breaks down like this: 1 person does nothing, who angers… 1 person who controls everything, who annoys… 2 people just trying to survive the process. Put students into groups, and you […]