This is my last night here in Austin and my brain feels like it’s been thrown into a relentless blender of ideas: spinning, colliding, sparking and sparkling. It’s tired, but happy. Utterly happy. That’s what happens when you spend days at SXSW, swimming in contrarian thinking, glimpses of the future, and debates that could change everything, or not. And that’s my job, after all: people ask me what’s next, and I figure it out. Or at least, I try to. Some questions do not have easy answers. Actually, the most interesting questions do not have answers… they open doors to possibilities, to likely futures. So asking the right questions is how everything starts. Sometimes, a great question is the best thing we’ve got.
Questions rule the world, Tara. They ignite curiosity, fuel wonder, and push us to connect the dots. And if you master the art of asking the right ones, you’ll never be lost, you will never be trapped.
SXSW is one of the places where I go to peek at the future, actually, multiple possible futures, all tangled together. It’s like staring into a kaleidoscope: every turn reveals something new. Some futures are dazzling, some are intriguing, some are dark, and all of them are possible. I try to navigate them with my own compass: one I keep sharpening, calibrating, questioning, upgrading. Because the future isn’t something we just enter. It’s not just there, It’s something we shape.
And whenever I feel overwhelmed by the sheer chaos of it all – and that is more often than you think-, I think of you.
Your endless “why, how, when, what.” Your hunger to know, to grasp, to understand. Your scalpel-like ability to slice through nonsense and crap and sniff out the truth. Your imaginary worlds, your stories, your inventions, your creations, your books stacked higher than your bed, your little bio-lab and experiments (I hope the baby snails are all right)… Your curiosity is boundless, your empathy burns like a fusion reactor: unstoppable, brilliant and blinding. But I know empathy isn’t just light and sheer. I know it’s weight. I know it bleeds, feeling the world’s unfairness in your very bones.
These are strange times, Tara. People have fought for centuries for the right to be somebody, to be with somebody, to love freely, to learn, to create, to live the way they want, to be who they truly are. People have fought for equality, regardless of sex, gender, age, religion, color, or geographical happenstance. Basic rights, right? And yet, everywhere we look, we see how fragile these rights really are. People are still fighting: in Africa, the Middle East, Ukraine. Even here, in the US, girls, minorities and people of color are watching their rights get chipped away in broad daylight. The powerful men, the ones who hoard control like dragons on a gold pile, want to rewind the world. Lock women back in the kitchen. They want women to stop aiming for equality, and go back to just having babies, and be silent. They push people of color back down the social ladder. Strip rights away from those who don’t fit their mold. Pretend they own the future. “They” have a face, Tara: they are white middle aged, suited, grumpy men. Here in the States, they’re symbolized by an orange president and the richest man on the planet: a narcissistic racist South African. They believe in a supremacy of the white race, in it ultimate testosterone driven male form. To them, Andrew Tate is a role model rather that a societal nightmare.
They try to conquer everything Tara, money, power, technology, tools… And they hope to win. But they don’t. They won’t. Because people here at SXSW (and all over the world) aren’t letting them. People are no sheep. Countless people here in a plethora of sessions have spoken out: against the misogyny, the hatred, the lies, the war, the manipulation, the bullying, the banning books, the idiotic silencing of science and freedom of expression. Michele Obama voiced it well: there is a high road. Leaders should step up, take the high road, be a symbol, not frolic in hate, lies and blind power. People from India, from Africa, from Europe, from the States have spoken out, and have called it. If it looks like fascism, talks like fascism, and smells like fascism, it’s certainly not a flower shop. History teaches us what’s next.
Technology isn’t good or bad. It’s a tool, like fire. It can light the way, or it can burn everything down. The same tech that spreads lies and fear can also spread knowledge, amplify empathy, connect us. The difference? Who wields it. And that’s where you come in.
Your greatest weapon, Tara, is your curiosity. Question everything. Ask: Who benefits? Who is silenced? What’s the real story? Trust that inner moral compass of yours: it doesn’t lie. And once you see the truth, speak up. Shine a light on the dark. Darkness hates that more than anything.
This is a colossal game, but here’s the trick: the dark side only wins when people stop caring. When they get lazy, shrug, and let the bullies take over. But you and I? We’re not “sheeping.” We ask why. We push back. We refuse to accept “that’s just the way it is.”
I saw incredible things at SXSW: breakthroughs in energy, in medicine, in technology, in social and mental health, in ways to clean the planet, in augmented intelligence. But all of it, every single innovation, only matters if the right people use it the right way. If enough of us—just 70%—choose to wield technology for good, we can drown out the 30% who want to use it for harm. Technology is a tool, it’s not a solution. Never was, never will be.
We are what truly matters.
The secret? We have to keep showing up. Keep caring. Keep prodding, poking, digging… Keep asking hard questions, even when the answers aren’t easy nor willingly give. And they’re often buried behind smoke, mirrors, glitter and menace. The truth is a verb.
You, my girl, have a role to play. You might be nine, but your ideas, your curiosity, your inner fire, your refusal to accept injustice, your dreams of a perfect world: those matter. They matter now. Don’t ever shrink yourself. Don’t ever take anything for granted. Don’t ever let someone (including me) tell you that you’re too young, too loud, too much, too “girl”. Be the Red Monkey. Be different, contrarian, yourself. The one who doesn’t follow the herd, who flips things upside down just to see what falls out.
I count on you, Tara, and all the other lionesses, unicorns, dinosaurs, rebels, and yes, kung-fu pandas of your generation to help steer this planet toward something better. Technology won’t save us. It won’t doom us either. What matters is what we choose to do with it. And SXSW reminds me that as long as enough good people keep questioning, keep building, keep pushing back—the tech bros and power hoarders won’t get to script their dystopian future alone.
They only will, if we let them.
Because here’s the thing: the future isn’t written. It’s fluid, like water. It becomes what we shape it into.
And you know what makes me smile, Tara? For me, the future has a face. Yours.
Love always,
Dad
