With Tech on the Defensive, SXSW Takes an Introspective Turn

The first five days or so of SXSW in Austin are always dedicated to the "interactive" portion of the festival. The city's downtown streets swell with lanyard-laden "entrepreneurs" and "founders" wearing that familiar uniform of T-shirts screen-printed with their company's clever logo, an outfit made professional by throwing a blazer over the ensemble. They bounce from panel to panel and branded "house" to branded "house" (this year, on scooters, so many scooters) hawking their new apps and software products, each promising to be more revolutionary and life-changing and utterly necessary than the next. For years, the unspoken question at the conference seemed to be which company will become SXSW famous, like Persicope, Foursquare, or, most memorably, Twitter? But this year, on the opening Friday of SXSW, Democratic presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren unleashed a manifesto titled "Here's How We Can Break Up Big Tech," and a new question burst onto the scene: What do you think of Warren's proposal?