Welcome to Tech-sas #5: Batshit Crazy
Dispatches from day 5 of SXSW 2025
Between March and September every year, you can head to the Ann W Richard’s Congress Bridge at dusk, and see millions of bats take flight. The bridge, an accordion style structure built to contract with the extreme hot to cold weather, has the perfect conditions to host the biggest urban bat colony in the world, where the pups eat a metric tonne of insects each evening to remove the need for bug spray.
When the bats first came to the city, the public didn’t like it. Omens, superstitions, literature: everything was pointing to them being blood suckers. It’s no wonder that they took shotguns to the bridge at dusk and shot at them with reckless abandon. A conservationist, known locally as Bat Jesus, knew that he had to act to save the species who were providing so much benefit to Austin and nature. He worked with local schools to show them cute baby bats, and armed the children of the Austin government with fun facts about their furry flying friends. Childlike awe and enthusiasm helped transform their reputation from rabid to revered amongst law enforcement. The shotguns came down, and the colony flew uninterrupted from then on.
Or so the story goes says Elijah, our kayaking tour guide who took us out on the Ladybird Lake on the warmest evening I’ve known for a while. We paddled and sat underneath the eaves, voices echoing and red lights looming as we watched this magnificent natural phenomenon take place. The kind of pinch me moment that ATX excels at.
Trying to obliterate change with a shotgun feels like quite the fitting metaphor for the period we’re currently in. We all know that we are at a turning point in the Information Age. Mainstreaming of generative AI was the calling card and the attitudinal shift advertising alone has taken bodes for big movement. But with that comes uncomfortable growth, stretch marks grooving into the idyllic lives of a world no longer just digital, but something beyond that, something gnarlier and chunkier and weirder and harder to quantify. What is it? Who knows! We have indicators, but the end of the world as we know it is here. This is the steam train of the Industrial Revolution, and it’s driving straight at us.
The midweek of SXSW , in between interactive and music, is an odd time. Quantum physics and transport roll in over design and health. The tenor and volume of talks adjust as the organisers prepare for the following weekends chaos. The city quietens as musicians take the night and tech bros get on planes home. But this is where the weird shit can happen. One, you get room to breathe. The phrase “ I can’t hear myself think” comes to mind, when the noise of Austin is cacophonous. But this little break allows you to start to hear the birds again, and the ideas bubble. And two, the more fringe presentations get room to bump up the schedule. You’re taking far more of a punt at what good looks like, but these tend to sand the edges off the hardened cynicism. See an eccentric German evangelise about rail travel, see the Sinyi Professor of Management at Cambridge arguing about just economies with a New Yorker reporter, see a real life descendent of Charles and Ray Eames talk beautifully and candidly through never seen footage of the Eames House.
It was the latter which scratched my brain in the unexpected way SXSW can. At a festival celebrating creativity, it’s rare the interactive portion features any real life artists. Eames Demetrios, Director and Descendant of Eames, was that soft, cool, knowledgeable and odd type of Californian Bohmeian which is hard to find in the polished streets of modern influencer Los Angeles. As he talked through the main factor of the house surviving the recent Palisades fire as sheer luck, it seemed reminiscent of the overarching theme of SXSW so far: our destruction is simply a role of the dice.
Which really is a lesson in vulnerability. To be vulnerable in the face of adversity feels counter intuitive, but humanity is one of the few traits we have in our toolbox. Cheryl Miller Houser, founder of Creative Breed, delivered a session on human centred storytelling and driving connection in culture. She posed that her human centred framework was the antidote to a divisive tech apocalypse, which while is well trodden ground never stops being a real solution. We are currently about to feel a lot of emotions, the full spectrum, as we try to figure out how the hell to navigate this world shift. To be able to use those continues to show a bravery that’s respected when everything starts to feel so faceless.
And then you get the pure “I have no idea what this is going to give me but I’m going anyway” portion of the celebrity keynotes. Metallicas Lars Ulrich joined a conversation with Zane Lowe about breaking the fourth wall, which ironically descended into the audience doing just that, requesting deep cuts to be played at their next shows and appearances at small dive bars. Whilst distracting the flow of the conversation, Lars and Zane entertained the bit, because well… fans. “The more people in your face, exchanging energy, the more it lifts you” Lars says. I get what he means. There’s no way I’d watch this live on a stream, but being among the very real throngs and fissions of excitement gave heat to the session.
As we got in our kayaks that evening to paddle back from the bat excursion, the Austin skyline was resplendent. We floated toward our part of town, where every tall building did not exist when I first game to Austin 4 years ago. The bats won’t last forever, the skyline will continue to change, and the fires will burn. But one things for sure, the world is will stay weird. Batshit, if you like.