SXSW Sells a Vision of the Future. Does It Have One of Its Own?

In the days and weeks before the City of Austin pulled the plug on South by Southwest in 2020, the event’s leaders cycled through the five Kübler-Ross stages of grief. Most of that time was devoted to the first: denial.To be fair, most of the country was doing likewise during the earliest days of the COVID-19 pandemic. President Donald Trump seemed unconcerned. Severe lockdowns had begun in China and Italy, and some international events had been canceled, but American institutions were mostly still humming along.And SXSW had very much become an important institution, one with a global reputation. Each year it brought together attendees from all corners of the world for conference sessions, concerts, and film screenings. Mark Zuckerberg, Barack Obama, and Bruce Springsteen had…

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