Silicon Valley Bank financial collapse haunted SXSW – 03/13/2023 – Tech

The party was supposed to be perfect. After the break in the pandemic years, South by Southwest (SXSW, or “South by” for the intimate) had everything to shine on its return to the city of Austin, Texas. The event annually brings together a good part of the cream of the technology sector and the global creative industries. It generates about $350 million in revenue for the city, more than the Superbowl brought in when it was held in Houston.

However, a specter haunted the festival. The specter of the financial collapse of the technology sector, represented by the bankruptcy within 48 hours of Silicon Valley Bank, which occurred just last Friday (10), exactly the date of the opening of SXSW. Suddenly, during the weekend, the topic infiltrated virtually all panels and conversation circles at the event.

It didn’t matter what the topic of the lecture was. Even those in the audience for sessions like “your dog can help you do your job” or “the economy of cannabis“, ended up hearing some kind of mention or joke about what was happening in the financial markets outside the event. Other panels more directly related to the topic, such as “tips to raise money for your start-up”, were totally dominated by the spectrum.

On Saturday, before the US Treasury Department announced that it would guarantee all Silicon Valley Bank deposits, I heard comments from people comparing SXSW to the Tax Island Ball, the last big party produced by a world that is about to change drastically. and deep.

Of course, the Treasury’s intervention provided relief for the participants. Many people’s concern was that when they returned home from SXSW, their job would no longer be there, given the announced inability of several tech companies to honor their commitments if the money deposited in the bank that collapsed had vaporized.

In this context, the technology lectures, oddly enough, seemed dated. Even dear Amy Webb, who every year gives a genial balance of the state of the technology sector, seemed to be describing yet another exuberant world that is becoming in the past, a set of futures that are actually becoming unpredictable.

Already the founder of Instagram, Kevin Systrom, who sold the company to Facebook, presented his new start-up focused on the universe of news. Project that seemed anachronistic, given the emergence of new artificial intelligences, such as Chat GPT.

Incidentally, this was the topic that really mobilized attention in the field of technology. The so-called “great models and language”, in fact, were one of the few themes that point to a future of rapid expansion, albeit full of problems, loose ends and bare wires. We will hear a lot about them and their challenges.

With all this, the field that made the most significant and useful contributions to the present was that of mental health and personal knowledge. For example, physician Deepak Chopra spoke about well-being and the pursuit of happiness through self-knowledge. He glowed.

Psychotherapist Esther Perel gave another brilliant speech about what she called “artificial intimacy”. She described how we are trapped in a world created by technology that makes our attention to other people always partial. We are with our partners, children and friends, but our heads are always on our cell phones, distracted. She urged all participants to rebel against this and to resume the practice of total attention, otherwise we would be building an increasingly solitary and disintegrated society.

On the day this article was written, Joe Biden saved Silicon Valley by promising to cover the banking meltdown of recent days. Whether that promise will be enough to avert bigger collapses, the next few days will tell. One thing is for sure: Biden at least saved the SXSW party.