The cancellation of SXSW and the Great Utopalypse of the 2020's

For more than 20 years, every March, SXSW has served as a kind of Trends Central at the convergence of technology, marketing, social change and pop culture. I've been privileged to have gone there eight times and I'm always sad if I can't make it. Just to go there is to immerse in a giant maw of new paradigms and sweeping insights.

This year, for the first time in its history, the event has been completely cancelled.

The cancellation itself is an enormous flash of insight about the new world we live in, a world that is both Utopian in its dazzling breakthroughs and Apocalyptic in its severe diminishment of the human potential. This is the modern Utopalypse.

The Internet has delivered the impossible dream of putting all human knowledge and expression at the fingertips of all. It has also made us the slaves of our phones.

Amazon, Google, Facebook and Apple have pioneered a new age of human possibility. They are also decried as tax-evading monolithic juggernauts that dwarf the robber barons of old.

A new humanism and enlightened consciousness is sweeping the planet. So are fake news, virulent social discord and mob psychology.

Machine learning empowers a whole new kind of personal relevance in how we make, distribute and communicate consumer products. But it can also be deadly to creativity and remove the care and craft of the human touch. 

A few weeks after its appearance, scientists around the world have already captured the entire genomic structure of COVID-19 and an effective vaccine may appear in the staggeringly short time of a year or two. At the same time, a spiral of unchecked panic has led to stockpiling, bunkered behavior and irrational fear - laced in some cases with surreptitious racism.

Can we fix the future?

I think the answer is Yes but I also think the challenge has never been higher.

I will miss going to SXSW but I will keep learning all the possibilities of new marketing tech, huge disruptions in commerce and new ways of experiencing brands.

I will remember the famous slogan the British government used to exhort the public in 1939 in the midst of the WWII apocalypse:

KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON.

And, yes, I will wash my freaking hands.