Davy Crockett’s famous words“You may all go to hell, and I will go to Texas” weren’t just a parting shot at his political enemies. They were a declaration of intent an extreme freedom. A proud middle finger to the establishment. He lost his re-election bid in Tennessee and, true to his word, packed up and rode straight into legend. The legendary shoot-out at the Alamo swallowed him whole, but his spirit never left Texas (he was never seen again). That same rebellious, defiant energy is what pulses through SXSW: the Austin festival that refuses to be tamed, where disruption, reinvention, and resistance all crash into each other, forming something messy, electric, and utterly unmissable.
I’m heading back to Austin for SXSW 2025 next week, and the feeling is as familiar as it is unsettling. The festival remains one of the last great cultural crucibles, where technology, music, and activism slam together in a blaze of inspiration and contradiction. It’s the only place where I can sit through a keynote on the ethics of AI-driven governance and then stumble into a tequila-fueled underground VR performance that rewires my well beaten sense of reality. It’s my yearly pilgrimage, and… you have no idea how much I am looking forward to it.
But something’s different this year. The tension is thicker. The world outside is fraying at the seams, and SXSW, always a barometer of cultural anxiety, feels like a gathering storm. Texas style and size. The usual utopian-ism of tech is colliding headfirst with a growing sense of unease. Gibson-liker dystopia smoked into a pessimistic brisket. Democracy is dripping one presidential executive order at a time. It’s bleeding. This year, the question isn’t just what’s next? It’s who’s in control of what’s next?
Beneath the neon glow of this fast-growing city, and the frenzy of hesitant startup pitches, something else is stirring. A different kind of energy is creeping through Austin. The weirdest city in Texas is becoming the focal point of a quiet but growing rebellion the coming weeks. Not just whispered complaints over overpriced tacos, inflation sensitive eggs, taxes and taxes… but full-blown ideological battles, it looks like a firm resistance will be brewing in meeting rooms, in late-night jam sessions, and in pop-up talks that don’t make the official schedule. The anti-Trump movement is finding its footing again, and it will happening right here, among the dusty tumbleweeds, tech bros, and digital value fighters.
AI: Multi model autonomous agents
SXSW has always been a battlefield for the future: Twitter was born here in 2007, Foursquare had its brief moment of check-in supremacy until @dens (Dennis Crowley) fucked it up , and Elon Musk once took the stage to casually propose making humanity an interplanetary species. But for every breakout success, there’s a graveyard of hype-fueled failures: Meerkat, the live-streaming darling that was crushed by Periscope, Ello, the so-called “Facebook killer” that disappeared into obscurity, and a long, tragic line of blockchain, NFT and VT projects that promised a revolution and delivered… a big “pouf”.
This year, the hunt for the next big thing is alive and well. The stakes? Higher than ever. Remember when ChatGPT was a novelty? When we marveled at its ability to draft a halfway-decent email and thought, wow, this changes everything? Feels almost innocent now. By 2025, AI isn’t just an assistant, it’s an entire ecosystem of powerful matrix-like agents that promise to anticipate, decide, and execute on our behalf. Shopping, scheduling, content creation, customer service: delegated to an ever-growing web of synthetic intelligence.
The SXSW expo floor will be a showcase of these so-called “autonomous AI assistants,” startups pitching AI that claims to think, plan, and take action independently. Are they real? Looks like it. Are they fascinating? Society-shifting? Terrifying? Absolutely.
But the real fight will not only be on the showroom floor. It’s in the conversations happening in the packed-out panels and whispered over too pricey whiskey at the Driskill Hotel. There’s a widening rift forming: between those pushing an AI-driven, coolwater guzzling automated future and those fighting to keep technology accountable, human-centered, energy friendly and ethical. I expect clashes over privacy, digital labor, deepfake governance, deepstate, demagogy, freedom of speech, echo chambers and the growing resistance to AI monopolies. SXSW 2025 won’t just be a showcase for AI: it’ll be a battleground for its soul (pun intended).
XR: long live on-face computing
If the metaverse hype cycle taught us anything, it’s that no one wants to live in a cartoon dystopia. Apple’s Vision Pro, once hailed as the dawn of mainstream spatial computing, is starting to feel more like a over expensive niche luxury than a cultural revolution. Nobody wants to be seen with ridiculous snorkel and dive mask. 😊 That doesn’t mean the dream of seamless, on-face computing is dead. On the contrary: Meta’s Ray-Ban collaboration has made smart glasses wearable, and the slow, steady push toward augmented reality is gaining traction in the everyday. I know, I’m wearing these spectacles every day: aging comes with perks!
This year’s SXSW will be a interesting litmus test: Are we finally ready for tech that overlays digital information onto our world without demanding we escape into a closed headset? Or will this generation of AR follow the fate of Google Glass—adored by a few, ignored by the masses? I’ll be keeping an eye on the demo floors to see who’s pushing practical, non-intrusive AR experiences and who’s still selling the metaverse like it’s 2021.
The next battle for power
SXSW has always been a stage for politicians looking to prove they “get it.” In 2019, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez set the place on fire with her razorsharp takedown of Big Tech’s unchecked power. Six years later, with Felon 47, the stakes are even higher. The question isn’t just whether she’ll show up, it’s whether her vision of platform accountability, data privacy, and economic justice can still cut through the noise of an AI-dominated discourse. She’s been called the princess Leia of 2028 in many circles already… or is that still too soon? Or will King Trump by then have rewritten history establishing a dynasty? Good conversation stuff over a 7 meat platter at the County Line.
2028 is looming. Every conversation at SXSW this year carries the undercurrent of a campaign season in motion. If AOC makes an appearance, expect fireworks. If she doesn’t, expect every panel on tech ethics, labor, and policy to invoke her name anyway. Because this year, the battle lines are clear: AI isn’t just about automation: it’s about power. Who owns it, who controls it, and who gets left behind.
That brings up Musk of course. The man who once held court at SXSW like a prophet, drawing crowds that hung on his every word about Mars, neural interfaces, and a world run on Tesla batteries. That was before Twitter became his personal X plaything, before he turned “free speech absolutism” into a business model for chaos, before his name became a litmus test for where you stand on the future of tech. This year, the Musk factor feels different. He’s not just the loudest voice in the room anymore: he’s a living case study in the unintended consequences of platform ownership. Will SXSW embrace him, reject him, or just shrug and move on? Either way, his presence—literal or metaphorical—will be impossible to ignore. As is the 47 billion drop in his personal wealth of last month.
Bruce Sterling: my unfiltered oracle
There’s only one person I trust to cut through the AI hype, the tech triumphalism, and the lingering scent of VC desperation: Bruce Sterling. His annual SXSW analyses is part sermon, part reckoning: a ritualistic gut-check for an industry drunk on its own possibilities. Sterling has been calling bullshit on utopian tech narratives since before some of this year’s attendees were born. If there’s one session that will predict what actually matters in 2025—and what will be in the scrap heap by 2026—it’s his.
His, and Amy’s. Every year, Amy Webb’s Tech Trends Report delivers a cold, data-driven slap in the face to anyone still caught up in last year’s hype cycle. AI, quantum computing, synthetic biology: she doesn’t just track the breakthroughs; she maps out the consequences. If you want to see where the future is heading before it steamrolls the present, her session is the one to watch. And if history is any guide, her predictions will be both exhilarating and terrifying. The same goes for Scott Galloway, who will undoubtedly deliver his usual mix of brutal honesty and market-savvy cynicism. Expect him to dissect the latest AI land grab, rip into Big Tech’s consolidation of power, and maybe, just maybe, offer a roadmap for where this all leads. Take it with a grain of salt. Galloway is entertainingly often his own worst enemy.
But the real SXSW isn’t just in the conference rooms or on the keynote stage. It’s in the city itself. Austin, the ever-weird, ever-wonderful, ever-endangered capital of contradiction. The BBQ will still be transcendent. The music will still make you feel something. But just beneath the surface, there’s a city straining under the weight of its own transformation. The climate crisis isn’t some distant concern—it’s a present, tangible force reshaping the landscape. Water levels are dropping, wildfires looming, and a heat that lingers long after the festival crowd heads home. Will this be the year tech finally stops pretending to care about sustainability and actually does something? Or will another round of panels on “climate innovation” be drowned out by the latest AI-powered nothingburger?
SXSW thrives in this tension between what’s possible and what’s utterly bullshit. Between wide-eyed optimism and cold-blooded skepticism. Between the dreamers, the disruptors, and the ones left cleaning up the mess. And me.
By the time the festival wraps, I’ll have seen the best and worst of AI, the next iteration of immersive tech, and more than a few high-stakes political and cultural showdowns. There will be breakthroughs. There will be implosions. There will be a thousand half-baked startups pitching a revolution that no one asked for.
And somewhere in the chaos, the future will start to take shape. It will be in my presentation, as always.
See you in Austin. And if you catch Bruce Sterling before I do, buy him a drink. I have questions.
