AUSTIN, Tex. — Even more than the website that bears his name, Andrew Breitbart’s most enduring contribution to American politics might be his observation that it is, inexorably, “downstream from culture.” There’s a lot of truth to that statement — which makes it all the more important to keep in mind how culture is changing, and fast. Technology is, arguably, the primary driver of that change. Breitbart died in 2012, and even he might have struggled to grasp how fast social-media platforms like Twitter and Facebook would alter our politics in the next several years. And that was long before TikTok. And a time when no one, except die-hard science fiction nerds, was talking about the “metaverse.” The SXSW festival lies at the epicenter of the collision between technology and the culture those technologies are reshaping. Unlike other tech conferences, this mix is part of its DNA. It’s morphed over its nearly four decades from an indie-focused music and film festival into a buzzy hive where big tech and media companies showcase their shiniest new objects. That means the sometimes embryonic cultural experiments on display this week — including during a dedicated four-day run of “XR and metaverse” events — could be a preview of the next act in American public life, and how we think about our roles in it. OK, so what will all this technology do to our politics in five years? Ten? The truth is, of course, that we have no idea. But we can start to think about how it’s going to shift culture. This is top of mind for a lot of the executives and tech leaders who show up here. Pablo Colapinto is the head of immersive at Nexus Studios, an animation company whose clients include Disney and the NBA, among others. At a café in downtown Austin this morning he described to me how virtual reality’s real-life social element plays a role in how his firm thinks about its products, sparking a series of questions not dissimilar from the ones people are asking about our current digital world. “How is this device enabling us to connect to each other more? How is it showing us that the space between us is not empty? How are we filling the space with stuff that is meaningful, where both of us can point to the same thing,” he asked. “The platforms that are thriving are community-driven like Roblox and Minecraft… those platforms are opening the gate.” Colapinto described to me the effect of the recent Times Square concert that his studio created for the “virtual” group Gorillaz, and how he’s seen augmented reality work change the nature of how people relate to their community. “Folks were freaking out… it proved the emotional case that these experiences can mean something to people,” he said. He described a theoretical AR-powered world in which the physical world people are moving through acquires a Foursquare-like digital overlay: “Suddenly where you are spatially becomes part of your digital identity… leaving marks that way, I don't know yet from an actual psychology perspective, what that does to, for example, teenage angst.” That sounds abstract. But tech also has the capacity to change even intimate relationships, which lie at the base of our social structure. A featured panel at the downtown Hilton this morning titled “The Future of Sex” explored how new technologies could have some modest impacts, like aiding in sex education (think VR in the classroom), or some very big and unpredictable ones, like enabling relationships with sophisticated, AI-powered virtual companions. Of course, in the time-honored tradition of the internet, the first “killer app” for a lot of technology might just be pornography. “I think the use cases for therapy and trauma and health are really powerful,” said Bryony Cole, host of the “Future of Sex” podcast. “...[But] I think the most money is going to be driven by porn, so we have to keep an eye on the adult industry.” Virtual reality is already shaping social behavior in unusual ways. When I spoke with the designer and futurist (respectively) Jesse Damiani and Leah Zaidi yesterday, Damiani referenced the prevalence of “mutes” in the virtual world VRChat — users who decline to speak in favor of reinventing their own identity, frequently as another gender. And Damiani suggested that virtual reality could fundamentally alter the way people communicate, which could have a massive impact on civic life. “Reality is comprised of consensus agreements about what is real,” he said, “so the metaverse and XR technologies create a context for us to assess what this human construct of reality is, which has very practical implications for information ecosystems.” The implications aren’t lost on the builders of these new tools, even if they can’t predict the long-term impact: “People in this space are grappling with the spread of information politically, and the impact of the rise of generative tools,” he elaborated. This is all mostly still notional. VR technology has yet to gain a serious foothold in the American household, rabid Gorillaz fans aside. But insomuch as SXSW functions as a laboratory, or incubator, or hype bullhorn for tomorrow’s emerging technologies, the level of sustained enthusiasm for virtual life here suggests it’s only going to encroach more on our embodied ones. To Colapinto all signs are pointing in that direction, as he put it to close our conversation: “It’s just going to get cooler and weirder from here.”
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