Notes from SXSW Interactive Part 2: Austin, We Have Ignition

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

Conference-goers lined up for complimentary quesadillas and browsed the technology-themed exhibits lining the sides of the Austin Music Hall as speakers took the stage at Ignite SXSW.

Similar to TED talks, Ignite events feature presentations from individuals spanning a wide variety of disciplines and professions. The evening’s theme was “2021 Visions of the Future.” Given five minutes and twenty slides apiece, the speakers, whose topics ranged from a business plan that essentially involves giving away free ice cream to the future of the nonprofit world, helped form a composite picture of what the world may look like in ten years’ time.

WFS member Derek Woodgate, Chief Creative Officer of Plutopia, a future-focused entertainment company, and president of futures-based consultancy the Futures Lab, gave a talk entitled “The Future of Entertainment: From Sensation to Imagination.” Among other things, he discussed some of the ways that entertainment could become increasingly linked with computer-mediated reality. For instance, computer-generated images could be holographically projected or otherwise superimposed onto the external world. Already, imagination sensation kits and augmented sensation devices can cause people to sense and perceive things that aren’t present in “reality.”

Nanotechnology will play a role as well. For example, microscopic electronics embedded in interactive contact lenses could project images directly onto your retina. Further afield, Woodgate looked at possibilities involving transhumanism and body augmentation.

Several nights later, examples of creative uses for innovative technologies abounded at Plutopia’s official SXSW party “The Future of Play.” (Look for a full write-up of the event in the July-August issue of THE FUTURIST.)

Angel Kwiatkowski, the founder of Cohere, a coworking space in Fort Collins, Colorado, began her presentation by introducing the concept of coworking, in which independent and freelance workers share an office space but not a common employer. This process enables them to create a community, a support system, and a professional network among themselves. Kwiatkowski then presented four scenarios on the future of coworking (each embodied by a different Golden Girl)—the result of a recent workshop held at Cohere.

After going through hundreds of sticky notes, the group at Cohere managed to pin down what they agreed were the two most important key variables determining coworking’s future. The first was an internal game changer (will a given coworking group hold together?) The second was an external one (is the economy stable or unstable?) The group then created four scenarios based on these two variables that looked at the different combinations of positive and negative trends.

For example, if the coworking community is unstable, but the economy is stable, then it’s likely that freelancers will leave contract work behind in order to take full-time employment with large companies. Lacking focused leadership, transient workers will come and go—and as trust and community evaporates, they will begin erecting cubicle walls, replacing openness with privacy.

(An interview with Kwiatkowski, which explores these scenarios in greater detail, is forthcoming.)

There were a number of standouts among the impressive array of exhibits as well. In one corner of the room, students from the University of Texas Cockrell School of Engineering working on clean energy solutions displayed a variety of innovative designs. These ranged from small, powerful, and inexpensive nanoprinted solar panels utilizing four-layer printing…

…to a prototype for a vehicle that runs on both hydrogen and oxygen, in two small tanks. When the fuel supply runs out, you simply put it in reverse and add water. The vehicle’s inner workings separate the two elements, and generate the fuel it needs to keep going.

Later, on the opposite side of the room, a friendly, grandmotherly woman with a soft Texas accent explained how she uses the open source electronics platform Arduino to power the motion-sensitive LED lights sewn into her handwoven goods.

The night concluded with a one-of-a-kind “live” music performance, courtesy of Austin-based performance art group Arc Attack’s singing Tesla Coils.

The Singularity: Humanity's Huge Techno Challenge

There were several panels on the technological singularity at SXSW Interactive, but this one in particular stood out. It also drew a large and engaged crowd, and spawned one of the livelier discussions at the conference.

Artificial intelligence researcher and CEO of Cycorp Doug Lenat started things off by speaking about the difficulties of creating software programs that satisfy the criteria for consciousness as we understand it. Beyond natural language comprehension (the so-called semantic Web), it is daunting to create algorithms that represent relevant knowledge, informal logic, common sense, and general understanding.

Looking at IBM’s Watson, he said, “There’s a difference between being a useful tool and an actual superhuman entity.” Watson has a veneer of intelligence—as opposed to actual intelligence. While computers excel at performing a wide variety of complex tasks, they have no idea why it’s doing it.

From climate change to energy shortages, there are various forces potentially holding back a technological singularity, Lenat said. The motivating factors that he listed as propelling us toward such a future (a growing demand for personal AI assistants, for example) seemed downright tame in comparison.

On the other hand, Michael Vassar, president of the Singularity Institute, has little doubt that the Singularity will happen sometime around 2030, as Vernor Vinge has predicted. Vassar pointed out that Vinge’s forecasts have proven to be almost impossibly accurate. He continued by saying that even though there are large risks, we can’t deliberately slow down the pace of technology to address them (just as there's no way to pause the market in order to address a potential economic downturn). It is impossible to put entire systems on hold. Instead, the best we can do is pay close attention as technology accelerates more rapidly.

The Singularity will come in waves and surges, rather than all at once, said the third panelist, Natasha Vita More, vice chair of Humanity+. Vita More views the Singularity as an opportunity for humanity, particularly with regard to technological enhancement and life extension.

“Before long, most of us—if not all of us—will have enhanced prosthetics,” she said. “We’ll be designing prosthetic bodies,” augmenting ourselves via technological design and extending our lifespans in the process.

Indefinite life extension cannot be achieved biologically, Vita More said. It will require advances in fields such as AI, robotics, nanotechnology, cognitive science, and neuroscience. “We will probably need whole-body prosthetics. We will probably have more than one body—and want more than one reality.” To that end, we will be boosting human cognitive ability as well.

And lest we should be steeling ourselves for a long, dark journey through the uncanny valley, Doug Lenat pointed out that prosthetists are focusing on less realistic-looking designs (since the more realistic-looking prosthetics are, the creepier we perceive them to be). Aesthetically, people prefer stylistic, blatanty artificial designs.

That being said, the idea that our physical manifestations could be replaced or exchanged for more fashionable ones every now and again like so many designer cases for the latest version of the iPod definitely takes some getting used to.

Left to right: Michael Vassar, Doug Lenat, and Natasha Vita More speak with attendees at the conclusion of their panel discussion, “The Singularity: Humanity's Huge Techno Challenge.”

More highlights to come in Part 3…