Unriddled: The Tech News You Need, SXSW Edition

 Welcome to this week's edition of "Unriddled": the HubSpot Marketing Blog's mid-week digest of the tech news you need to know.

This week, we're coming to you live from South by Southwest (SXSW), a festival of interactive events where we're positively drowning in a sea of bots, music, and some of the best tacos around.

But fear not: if recent current events have you scratching your head and wondering, "What just happened?", we've got you covered.

It's our Wednesday tech news roundup, and we're breaking it down with Amanda's dance move of the week: none other than The Robot.

Unriddled: The Tech News You Need

1. SXSW Kicks off With Mixed Sentiments on Tech

In Austin, TX, the annual SXSW celebration of tech, film, and music kicked off with mixed sentiment and messaging around tech.

Each year, SXSW polls attendees for the Trust Barometer: a measure of how much faith the crowd has in things like media, institutions, business, and technology. And despite the interactive presence at the event, this year's survey found that attendees have quite a low level of trust in emerging technology.

Attendees seem to have the lowest level of trust in blockchain technology, coming in at only 27%. That's followed by autonomous vehicles at 33%, and the same percentage of attendees reporting trust in virtual reality (VR) platforms.

The Trust Barometer results for technology echo an overall key change in an outlook of technology that's been discussed in several sessions at SXSW. According to certain expert panels, it seems that users are generally looking to revisit a more human element in the technology they use, from social media to smart speakers and digital assistants.

In the realm of social media, for instance, some predict that the trend is moving toward a greater emphasis on communities.

"Sometimes, it’s easier to share more intimately in a group," said Facebook Product Design Manager Tutti Taygerly during a panel discussion -- suggesting a move toward "smaller, more intimate social networks." 

That suspected widespread need for more personal communication among consumers also came up during a panel discussion on the next wave of communication with technology like voice assistants and bots.

"What about emotional attachments?" asked moderator Shara Tibken, a senior reporter with CNET. "Do you see a day when these become our therapists, or our friends?"

"People do ask the bots if they’re a boy or a girl," responded Dashbot co-founder and CEO Arte Merritt, adding that users also ask these technologies for their names, and whether or not they're real.

People send images into these chatbots," he continued. "It turns out people treated a weather bot like a person, and sent it pictures like it would to a friend.” 

2. Twitter's CEO Held a Live Broadcast to Discuss the Network's Health

As we reported in February, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announced in a series of tweets that the social network would be enlisting the help of outside experts to determine the relative health of Twitter. That decision, it seems, was largely a response to user demand for Twitter to resolve the use of its network to engage in negative, often hateful conversation on the platform.