The Deloitte booth at SXSW featured two 3D printers that created many different, creative items during the week.
SXSW Interactive is known as the platform for pitching new ideas and exploring innovative technologies. Despite the heavy emphasis on privacy and security at this year’s conference, the developers and tech startups were out in force.
Secret is a new app that launched 39 days prior to SXSW and adds to the number of new social sharing apps that emphasize privacy. Unlike SnapChat, Secret posts are public but are completely anonymous. Its creator, David Byttow, built the app to provide space in a post-PostSecret era for people to share things they will not share with family, friends or on traditional social channels. The app has been quickly adopted and in the Wild West of social seven years ago would be met with cheers. However, Byttow was grilled by the audience and Josh Constine of TechCrunch for an hour in a session on anonymous social networks about the true privacy of the data and the legal entailments of their model relative to subpoenaed information. For much of the session Byttow was on his heels, and it was even evident at times that he was uncertain how to address the questions being raised, appealing to the power of community to self-regulate and the continued evolution of this young app. On the one hand the session deepened the question for me about the deep desire for privacy among younger users alongside the equally powerful desire to share and connect. What is the resolution of this tension? Second, the conversation about Secret demonstrated the change in climate over data security in light of the events of the past year or two. The app presents an interesting extension of social technology while raising key questions in my mind about our culture and the future of this sort of technology.
Stephen Wolfram of Mathematica fame addressed the SXSW crowd, demonstrating some new tools his company will soon release that will empower developers and potentially inspire another wave of technical creativity. Several years ago, Wolfram released WolframAlpha, which is a powerful natural language computation resource available in a free Google-like web site. Building on this technology, Wolfram will soon release a suite of resources that will provide full access to the Wolfram language and even allow for application calls into the Wolfram Cloud for app developers. The power of their Cloud API structure is compounded by the natural language forms built into the Wolfram language that will allow experienced developers and novice programmers to quickly and easily build sophisticated functions and applications. The long-term value of these new tools have yet to be seen, but Wolfram’s demonstration suggested that the power of their tools would make complex programming tasks much easier for the experienced and novice developer.
23 and Me founder Anne Wojcicki also reflected on the power of computation and innovation to better our lives in a conversation about emerging preventative health care technologies. Wojcicki focused on her own venture, 23andme.com, which provides a genetic profile for $99 that can be used in partnership with a physician or other providers to help prevent known future health issues. The genius of her health advocacy project is that it works around the health care system to keep costs minimal. While 23andme cannot currently provide interpretations of personal DNA data until a federal review of the product can be completed, the data can be read by another health professional to help anticipate preventative care for genetic dispositions. That we can map the human genome and tie genetic aberrations/tendencies to particular conditions is powerful and can be useful to reduce overall health care costs by treating patients before health complications emerge. 23andMe is a game changing innovation because it places the onus of our healthcare on preventative medicine as opposed to later treatment.
Wearable technologies were the talk of SXSW and pervasively employed throughout the conference by attendees. Several sessions addressed the power of wearable technologies like Fitbits, Fuel bands and Google Glass. Positively, these wearables demonstrate value to the user through the interactive data they provide. Negatively, devices like these introduce key privacy concerns as more bio data is read by these devices and stored in the cloud. Another device that has a great look but raises security concerns is by Epiphany Eyewear. Their new HD glasses look like pair of Ray Ban shades. Built into the frames is an HD micro camera that records video on touch command to the storage in the glasses, which is about 32Gb. While Google Glass is apparent, as noted by the many pairs seen at this year’s conference, these glasses do not look any different from a regular pair of shades. While these glasses are far less capable than Glass, they make it very simple to film or live stream any event.
Finally, several innovators showed off their projects, many of which launched at SXSW. The startups ranged from Buncee.com, a new intuitive online presentation design tool, to Sociyall, a Texas-born socialized event engagement app, and to Squerb, a new social opinions app that offers a dynamic way to gain feedback from your community. While there were some truly expansive ideas, such as Aurasma, a technology that allows users to engage creative content by scanning pictures or other objects, many of the startups seemingly continued to either replicate or add feature layers on existing social media resources. While there were some interesting apps and other technologies, I did not see anything truly groundbreaking on the horizon during this year’s SXSW Interactive in the startup area.
Despite not finding the next Facebook, the innovative resources I encountered, along with creative conversations with several people during the conference, encouraged me that all is not lost in this new era of the Internet and we all have a few things to be excited about as we anticipate a few SXSW launched and developed apps and technologies.