Aaron M. Cohen's blog

Question (to me): What was the most amazing session you saw at SXSW this year?
I only managed to catch two of the four keynote presentations this year, but both of them were huge highlights for me and many other attendees at SXSW 2012.

This three-part series on South by Southwest Interactive 2011 concludes with a look at some award-winning Web sites, a core conversation on education, and a panel discussion on crowdsourcing in politics.

Part two in this three-part series looks at a few more highlights from South by Southwest Interactive 2011.

Ignite SXSW: 2021 Vision of the Future

“They call it ‘nerd spring break’ for a reason,” one veteran conference-goer warned me shortly before I hopped on a flight bound for Austin, Texas and South by Southwest Interactive.

Futurist Film Studies Week continues (concludes, actually) with a brief review of the biographical documentary Transcendent Man, one of two movies intended to introduce Ray Kurzweil’s ideas to a larger audience. The other, a feature-length film version of The Singularity Is Near, directed by Kurzweil along with Anthony Waller and Toshi Hoo, is currently making the rounds on the film festival circuit. Filmmaker Robert Barry Ptolemy and subject Ray Kurzweil are currently screening Transcendent Man in various cities around the country. The full schedule of upcoming appearances and events is on the film’s Web site.

This past Friday, I found myself in the midst of a close-to-capacity crowd at the First Unitarian Church in downtown Portland, Oregon for a screening of The Economics of Happiness. The documentary was made by Helena Norberg-Hodge, along with Steven Gorelick and John Page, via their foundation, the International Society for Ecology and Culture (ISEC). It features such notable figures as Bill McKibben and Vandana Shiva among its impressive array of talking heads. The filmmakers are screening the film in various cities around the world as part of a cross-country build-up to the DVD release.

On a recent cold and windy December night, in an office park in northern Virginia, a group of technology industry professionals were holding a fashion show. Volunteers walked the runway in "geek chic" outfits that alternately displayed sophisticated gadgetry and referenced iconic pop culture franchises.

A large, diverse audience packed Washington, D.C.’s Sidney Harman Hall this past Friday for the independently organized TED event TEDx MidAtlantic. “TED” stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design, and over the decades, that focus has broadened to include pretty much every imaginable field.

Is there any field that has struggled more with foresight in recent times than the music industry? The compass is spinning wildly, and there is little consensus on where things are headed—much less which direction to go in. Meanwhile, the large questions just loom larger.