SXSW Field Log // Day 2: The Handover State Emerges
Companion, tool, god, mother. AI identity is still unsettled while the grid and orbital layer are already mid-transfer.
Everything feels mid-transfer. AI identity is still unsettled. The grid is already absorbing the cost. Orbital infrastructure is moving from experiment to address.
Opening Pulse
Day 2 is when the conference starts metabolizing itself.
The rooms are still overfull. Downtown routing keeps splitting the day into separate cognitive climates.
Today’s sessions might not seem obviously connected: AI identity, data-center load, orbital servicing, the ISS handover.
By the end of the day, the thread took shape.
What happens when a system stops being experimental and starts becoming infrastructure?
// sys.environment
room_capacity = unstable
network_reliability = suspect
handover conditions detectedSessions
Two Futurists and an AI: Seeing Trouble Ahead
// session.log
Sarah DaVanzo // Porter Novelli
Faith Popcorn // Brain Reserve
Delph.ai // synthetic futurist AI
subject = AI identity modelsThis session was built around disagreement. Counter-posed and productively so.
Sarah DaVanzo (playing the role of utopian) and Faith Popcorn (dystopian) sat across from each other with Delph.ai (protopian AI) in the room: a synthetic futurist trained on the perspectives of more than 150 female futurists. The question hanging over the whole session was simple enough: what exactly are we inviting AI to become?
