The Lab Insight and Strategy’s Kristy Richards to present talk on ‘Sci-Fi Realities’ at SXSW in Texas

Kristy Richards, partner and head of culture at The Lab Insight and Strategy will be alongside speakers as diverse as Game of Thrones actresses and former American Vice President, Joe Biden at this month’s SXSW conference in Austin, Texas.

Says Richards who is an expert in consumer and cultural insight and the lead of The Lab’s Annual Cultural Report: “The technological world has always been about innovating and evolving the tangible. At SXSW we explore an era where technology becomes increasingly more intangible and invisible.”

Richards will join Australian Sci-Fi novelist, Cat Sparks to give a presentation titled ‘Sci-Fi Realities and Tomorrow’s Consumer’. They will present an image of the world tomorrow where Artificial Intelligence (AI) looms large and devices no longer exist, replace by connected, smart environments that will have made daily life almost effortless.

They will raise thought provoking discussion through the lens of Science Fiction to provide a framework for the future:

    • How will society and consumers be influenced and changed in a device free era?

    • How should marketers of the future tackle the tensions between themes of intimacy an isolationism, boredom and fear and truth and serendipity that will arise from our supposedly carefree lives?

    • Sci-fi and speculative fiction have always been tools that help frame what it means to be

human. We look to emergent narratives to help question and challenge what it means to be human.

In answering these questions, they will provide marketers and innovators with a guide on how they can fit into, connect to and influence this rapidly approaching future.