SXSW Day Five Recap: Trend Forecasting and Digital Art Blog

Another day, another unending source of inspiration during SXSW the fifth day. From wandering at the Creative Expo to trying new VR adventures The event had just the number of activities you could enjoy and panels to attend.

Whistleblowing with Facebook

Frances Haugen made headlines last year, when she appeared before Congress about Facebook's internal policies as well as its excessive reach.

At SXSW, she reiterated many of her talking points and gave more color to her narrative and particularly sinister product development at Facebook that have led to the company's dominance on the market.

For an easy phrase: Facebook gives the most access to some of the most radical thoughts.

This is extremely risky. She broke her talk into three main ideas:

1. Censorship systems are ineffective
2. Facebook does not scale to an increasingly diverse global population
3. Conversations around censorship distract from the real issues

All machine learning systems are biased. They are created by people and carry their biases.

Frances advised Facebook - as well as the audience at large - to look at digital products. "When we are focused on the products, we can fix things for everyone in all of the globe, and not just those who make money."

Facebook is keen to display quarter over quarter growth, but after a certain amount the growth slowed down when people were just engaging with their friends and family. Even when brands were brought into the mix, it still eventually stagnated, that is until Facebook realized the power of groups.

Early Facebook users might remember they can be invited into an organization and decide to accept the invitation and later interact with group members. A product choice was made to remove the invitation step and to simply place people into those groups. And thus, the echo chamber was born, with more dissident content, and progressively radicalized audience members. "Groups constitute the ignition source for the algorithm. by the algorithm."

If we apply this principle to elections, for instance it is clear that the more polarizing the wording, the better its performance on platform. So political ads that show compassion or empathy will have a higher cost than those that are inflammatory. Even though campaigns are cost-conscious, as they have always been, it's therefore not in their best interest to target a greater level of emotional understanding. All this helps to make a more divided, and as Frances claims, a more violent world.

Speaking of tech, as well as extending far beyond Facebook, we caught the latest tech news in...

Amy Webb's 2022 Emerging Tech Trend Research

NYU Professor and head of the Future Today Institute Amy Webb was back at SXSW this year to take part in a formidable conversation on the future of technology.

She began by displaying an image on screen and challenging us to try to figure out what it was. Within a few seconds we were shown the image was actually the image of a cow. When we first noticed it, it's difficult to not see the image. It doesn't matter if we rotate the image or it changes color. This is known as Dallenbach's Cow. It's not obvious why you don't recognize it initially is due to exactly the same reason why we don't detect the emerging signs of change or tech trends as they could alter the near future. It doesn't fit into the existing model of our minds, so for our brains, it's pure sensory information. Our brains will concentrate only on dark areas because they are obvious, and we miss all the white space.

"Reperception is the essence of imagination, creativity, and entrepreneurship."    Amy webb

The truths haven't changed, however our perception has. Her main focus was on reperception. She urged us to use daily, and to constantly look out for the cow. "Reperception is the basis of imagination, creativity, and the spirit of entrepreneurship." This is the most important tool to great management.

Reperception isn't used to forecast the future instead, we use it to manage the uncertainty and uncertainty and in our pursuit of new territory. We can use trends to help us perceive, and from there we need to consider the next stage of implications and come up with strategic scenarios so that we can inspire action.

So with the groundwork established, she jumped into a few major trend clusters: artificial intelligence, metaverse and web3, and synthetic biology.

Through artificial intelligence, Amy posited that AI constantly alters our understanding of reality. We've already surpassed benchmarks across AI and are getting closer to the time when AI systems will be able to make independent decisions, without human intervention and that's not only simple ones. The decisions are multilayered and intricate.

Presently, AI systems can determine what we mean, in addition to what we speak. The future is when this is likely to be indistinguishable with actual intelligence. AI is able to write text which is equivalent to human text using a method known as GPT3. In addition, as the public becomes more aware regarding facial recognition, the truth is that AI is able to detect our heartbeats and determine who we are. It is able to analyze the patterns of our breathing. It doesn't have to look at our faces in order to identify our identity.

In 2024 there will be a new IEEE WiFi standard that paves the way for the collection of more biometric data. In our world right now, AI can detect emotions and other qualitative features as well as studies have proven that we trust synthesized faces more than real faces.

So how does this play out in the real world? We can design a synth to be a certain hair color or gender certain, but we can additionally have it score highly on trust, sentimental warmth or empathy. We can then utilize GPT3 using data from the actual world in order to facilitate a receptive dialog. Imagine the use cases on the positive side: L&D, do a table read for scripts or script, etc. And of course, there exist sinister possibilities for the same thing that we can leave the imagination of our readers.

We could also use AI to make the process of searching more clear. The current system of search is based upon the notion that we know what we're searching for. However, what if this information helped us along the way.

When we think about the potential catastrophic or optimistic implications of this world Recerception ought to leave us asking important questions:

Do the people who are building the systems sufficiently diverse? Inclusive enough?Should it be mandatory to disclose when something or someone is AI-generated?

Amy outlined the optimistic as well as the catastrophic ways of expanding this truth to the time to come. The optimistic version of the scenario is that we live in a time of greater transparency, while the catastrophic offers cataclysmic misinformation. The author outlined the probability of each scenario as 20% and 80% likely and 80%, respectively.

When Amy transitioned into the realm of metaphysics, she began with less of the rampant enthusiasm as we've seen in different panels during SXSW. As she put it"The most significant observation is that people are all chasing the shiny. The coming generation will be vital and significant, however, it's not going to be the digital collection of collectibles and real estate. It will be NFTs.

FVEGFaURsJhhMUZZZqnfC   From SXSW Day Five and Amy Webb's Tech Trends Report - The Metaverse

The virtual world we know it is becoming more sensory and immersive. The future will be a continual push for the immersion, adding in additional sensory experiences as well as different levels of immersion as we interact with emerging technology. The data we collect is the basis of everything else possible.

She touched on the notion of digital twins, as being able to create a virtual version of ourselves will become a breeze. There will be different versions of ourselves and layer in some of that emotional complexity that we discussed using AI. You may be asking yourself what the reason for doing this? The answer is that it's already happening. We behave differently on Facebook than we do on LinkedIn as we do on Roblox and Tinder.

Right now there is any common language or protocol to connect the universe, which means there's an unending sense of self. The next few years will see the proliferation of digital IDs which use blockchain as a proof of identity, and thus provide a permanent experience online.

Our shopping habits and the way we earn money are likely to change. We may start to use places that are passive like our homes with Bluetooth connectivity to earn us funds since the computing power available is limited and is in high demand.

Amy cautioned on the NFT explosion. Digital collectibles are now highly sought-after due to their rarity, but the market is growing saturated. It was noted by the author that many NFT enthusiasts draw the comparison to fine art, but it's a flawed one. However, she believes that they are fun, exciting, and a stepping stone to what's actually being constructed - - which is the less shiny infrastructure.

And while physical real estate is valuable, Amy also noted consciousness real estate - that is sleeping. Amy spoke about Targeted Dream Incubation where tech companies and brands can enter your dreams. She thinks that we're increasingly influenced when we enter the realm of metaphysics, and it's evident in this idea of crossing over into dreams and sleeping.

When we begin to move towards reperception here, we have to consider Who are the individuals who build out these spaces? Are they optimizing for everybody? Are they interoperable? Who gets to decide what standards are acceptable? What happens if today's digital marketing system fails? Who is responsible for policing the metaverse?

Finally, Amy touched on computers and synthetic biology. She also discussed how we can program biological systems just like we program computers. Amy was intrigued by the idea about DNA hard drives and talked about the latest developments in the field of biology.

Being more educated and ready to get on more trends, we headed over for a visit to...

10 Megatrends that aren't obvious, but they will shape 2022 and Beyond

In this engaging presentation, the Non Obvious Company took us through the latest trends they believe are going to be top-of-mind in the coming year, as well as beyond.

We won't be going through all ten in detail, we're highlighting a few which we believe to be particularly astute:

The instant knowledge is one of the benefits. The world consumes bite-sized information at any time and benefit from learning everything quicker. At the same time we run the risk of losing our the basics.

The idea of this is of paramount importance to us in our company, which is why we provide short lessons and videos on our social media channels to offer quick and easy learning and appreciate the total expertise of teachers in helping you learn something new. The fun is in the excitement, taking the time to learn, and in the process of making, whether it takes two minutes or 2 years.

Next up we headed over to our very own workshop on Digital art...

NFT Culture The Building of Community and Define The Success of the Web3 Creator Economy

Both started out with a level-set of what each of these terms are - DAOs, NFTs, metaverse, blockchain, and so on - which are now a vital vocabulary for SXSW 2022.

Then, we learnt about the origins of pplpleasr's character. After her time in animation and being laid off due to the outbreak, she discovered her niche in developing NFTs and growing a steady and loyal fanbase in the process. Since then, she's teamed up with the likes of Steve Aoki and also launched her own web3 video platform, Shibuya, to examine, produce, and distribute long-form video content within this new area.

"People shouldn't think of NFTs as a vessel to get rich quick, but as a different way to create sustainability for your business... each creator is the entrepreneur they want to be and is able to set up shop anywhere."

And that's just what pplpleasr has done. The best part is that she's showing her exact steps to accomplish this in a brand-new Original to be released later this year. Be on the lookout for it!

What's to come next in our final day of SXSW...

Watch for tomorrow's update as we explore the motives and implications of GenZ and the metaverse, and an overview of our key learnings from this year.