2014 Schedule
Interactive: March 7–11  •  Film: March 7–15  •  Music: March 11–16

A Sheep in Wolf’s Clothes: The Myth of Disruption

#sxsw #ANewMyth

The tech world’s catch phrase du jour is “disruption.” But what’s being disrupted? Uber disrupts taxis, AirBnB disrupts hotels, Twitter disrupts mainstream media, but are these changes substantive or superficial? Beyond the trite rhetoric of a revolutionary future, you’ll find the status quo is alive and well. We know. Since early 2012, we’ve been interviewing a cross-section of American thinkers about the difference between actual new ideas and the counterfeit “futurism” of existing systems.

Numerous ideas of “The Good” compete in modern American thought, but some carry greater weight. The most prevalent is a mix of free-market capitalism, representative democracy, material progress, and scientism. Much of the tech industry espouses these values, but where do they come from and where do they lead?
This talk will examine multiple ideas of “The Good”, from transhumanism to primitivism, liberalism to libertarianism, and we’ll try to determine what disruption *really* looks like.

Presenters

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Aengus Anderson

Radio producer

The Conversation Group

Aengus Anderson is an oral historian and digital media producer. His work explores how Americans think about the present and reflect upon their pasts. Since 2012, he has been working on The Conversation, a collaborative interview project about the future. His radio stories have aired on numerous public radio stations, Snap Judgment, Latino USA, and the High Country News podcast. In print, his work has appeared in Boing Boing and San Francisco Magazine.

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Micah Saul

Co-Host

The Conversation Group

Micah Saul is co-host of The Conversation, an online project about philosophy and the future. When not working on The Conversation, he is an Ontologist at a tech company in SF and plays trumpet for The Sad Bastard Book Club.

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