Joey Lopez, PhD is the Media Lab Director in the Department of Communication at Texas A&M University.

Receiving his B.S., M.A. and Ph.D. in New Media at UT Austin in the Radio, Television and Film’s ACTLab program, he’s been active in the new media field for over 20 years, starting with UT-Austin’s ACTLab, where he was teaching assistant for the preeminent new mediast Sandy Stone. Look at those linked sites for an idea of Joey’s background and inspiration.

Using project-based learning and the ACTLab concept of “Make Stuff, Take Risks and Be Awesome”,  Joey engages students in their passions and encourages them to take those provocations and enthusiasms outside the classroom and into the real world. His students have gone on to an array of careers and entrepreneurial endeavors – from stunt persons to Shark Tank winners to teachers, lawyers and newspaper publishers.

Joey’s research revolves around anthropology, action-based research, and community advocacy. His theoretical explorations include but are not limited to race, gender, entrepreneurship, advocacy, alternative pedagogy and civic engagement. His professional practice includes photography, video, audio, new media, technology consulting and STEAM based community programming. He has worked with the Institute of Texan Cultures, Bexar County, Launch SA, CBS Sports, GA Media, 24 Hour Entertainment, The Smithsonian, JMS Racing, Boost Logic, Spare Parts and many others.

Jon and Scoop interview Hugh Forrest, Chief Programming Officer for South by Southwest (SXSW). SXSW is perhaps the world’s largest annual media festival. The SXSW conference has over 70,000 attendees from 106 countries, and almost 5,000 speakers. The overall festival, including film and music, has over 230,000 attendees. The Austin Chamber of Commerce recognized Hugh (along with other SXSW directors) as “Austinite of the Year” in 2012. Ernst and Young recognized the directors in 2014 as Austin Entrepreneurs of the Year.

Before working with SXSW, Hugh published a small newspaper, The Austin Challenger. He then joined The Austin Chronicle. This led him into a relationship with SXSW, which had roots in the Chronicle. With the late Dewey Winburne, he organized the SXSW Multimedia conference, which later became SXSW Interactive. With digital convergence, Interactive became the festival’s glue, and Hugh became Chief Programming Officer.

In our interview, we make a deep dive into history and happenings at SXSW. Among other things, we discuss how media industries are melding together or converging, and that “one of the things SXSW does really well is bring together all kinds of very creative people, and mix them together, and there are unique connections that come out of that…”

“Joy Cunningham knows that theatre saves lives. She’s been creating original theatre for 20 years and working with young people all her life. She also knows folks want to have fun so her one-woman shows and workshops for youth are fun and funny.” – from Joy’s online bio.

Joy has worked as an actor, singer, director, producer, writer, manager, and teacher across the country. An Austin talent agent dubbed Joy a “self-contained theatrical unit.” She has played over 60 stage roles, and done film, commercials, print and voiceover work.

Scoop and I met Joy at the ACTLab 2019 festival, where she was workshopping an excerpt from her new show, “Welcome to Blackstone.” Our recording of that excerpt follows our interview. In it, she reflects the heart of the zeitgeist through a rural American lens.

Our interview with Joy is considers how we find and make meaning, and struggle to manifest our analog human being in the world.

Plutopians met Robert Jackson Bennett at “Science Fiction House” during SXSW 2019. Thats where we began our fascinating discussion about the blurry border between fantasy and science fiction.

Robert is an award-winning author of science fiction and fantasy. He’s a two-time award winner of the Shirley Jackson Award for Best Novel, an Edgar Award winner for Best Paperback Original, and is also the 2010 recipient of the Sydney J Bounds Award for Best Newcomer, and a Philip K Dick Award Citation of Excellence. City of Stairs was shortlisted for the Locus Award and the World Fantasy Award. City of Blades was a finalist for the 2015 World Fantasy, Locus, and British Fantasy Awards. The Divine Cities Trilogy was nominated for a Hugo for Best Series. His eighth novel, Foundryside, was released in 2018 to wide acclaim.

Robert “likes to write worlds that have a fantasy feel” … “spy novels that are dressed up like fantasy.” His narratives were inspired in part by cyberpunk fiction. In our Plutopia interview, we talk about how Robert approaches writing, and how he builds the worlds in which his narratives live and breathe.

Author, lecturer, critic, and culture jammer Mark Dery gave this talk, “Let’s Get Lost: an Experiment in Controlled Digression,” at the ACTLab 2019 conference in June. (For more information on Mark, see our earlier conversation with him about his latest book, a biography of Edward Gorey called Born to be Posthumous. In this talk, Mark explores the thematic conference notion of “rebooting the noösphere,” beginning with the concept of the dérive, “a determinedly directionless, but far from purposeless stroll through city streets” that results in a “psychogeographical reimagining” that “disrupts the unitary urbanism imposed by capitalism on our experience of everyday life.”

Author Lewis Shiner has written nine novels and many short stories. His latest novel is Outside the Gates of Eden, a novel of the late 1960s and early 1970s. The novel is set in the evolving counterculture and world of popular music of the time, mixing fictional and real characters. Shiner captures the spirit of the 60s and the creative energy of the emerging rock and folk music scenes. His early writing was science fiction, and he was identified with the revolutionary cyberpunk sub-genre. Formerly a resident of Texas, Lew currently lives in North Carolina.

He was a musician while in high school and college, and was a self-supporting session musician for a few years. Several of his novels have rock and roll characters and elements. His latest novel is his most ambitious, and the focus of our Plutopia conversation.

Lewis Shiner’s website

Lewis Shiner’s Twitter

Lewis Shiner at Amazon

Robert Matney is Managing Director of Stream Integrity at New Knowledge, a company that detects, monitors, and mitigates social media manipulation — in various contexts, for diverse clients. The company produced a well-covered report called “The Tactics & Tropes of the Internet Research Agency”. This report, co-authored by Robert, quantified and contextualized the extent of the Russian influence campaign during the 2016 US elections.

New Knowledge specializes in disinformation defense for highly visible brands under attack by coordinated disinformation campaigns — Robert speaks of “the dumpster fire of the Internet.”

In our unsettling discussion with Rob, we discuss what’s wrong with the contemporary Internet, and how to address the growing proliferation of disinformation and propaganda within the digital ecosystem.

Owen McNally is a researcher and technology analyst in Austin, Texas. An enduring theme in his work over recent decades is the analysis and evaluation of technology based on humanistic principles. After completing undergraduate studies in Psychology at the University of Dallas, he turned in the early 1990’s to studying cognitive neuroscience, artificial intelligence, the pre www internet, and cyberpunk culture. After completing graduate work in psychology at Duquesne University, he joined a series of software development teams as a usability and quality assurance tester. He subsequently earned an interdisciplinary PhD at the University of Texas at Austin, with a program of work in Medical Cognitive Science, and has taught college level software design, cognitive studies, psychology, research methods, and statistics for the behavioral sciences. In recent years his work has been in the areas of research for investors in cybersecurity, neurotech, AI, logistics and hospital technology.

In part 2 of our interview with Joe Nick Patoski, we focus on essential Texas and Austin food, and on Austin’s unique cultural history and evolution. We cover a lot of ground: SXSW, Austin is for the curious, basic food groups (TexMex, BBQ, and chicken fried steak), music (alt country, psychedelic, punk; the Armadillo World Headquarters and Soap Creek Saloon), coevolution with San Francisco (“so much of the foundation that was poured in San Francisco was poured by Texpatriates.”), armadillo art, and post-ethnic Austin.

Also: check out Joe Nick’s weekly Texas Music Hour of Power!

In his latest book, “Austin to ATX: The Hippies, Pickers, Slackers & Geeks Who Transformed the Capital of Texas,” Joe Nick Patoski gives us an insider’s analysis of the changes wrought upon the state capital and “sleepy college town” that became an alternative to the stereotype of “Texas Culture.” Joe Nick has chronicled many Texas “institutions” in his previous writings, including Willie Nelson, the Dallas Cowboys, Selena, Conjunto music, barbecue and many more typically Texan subjects. His weekly Texas Music Hour of Power, broadcast on KRTS FM Marfa Public Radio, has become a Saturday evening tradition for fans of Texas music.

Jon and Scoop spent an entertaining afternoon chatting with Joe Nick about his book and everything Austin. In this first of two episodes, Joe Nick gives us a history lesson on “Old Austin” and its journey to becoming ATX. “It was always an outsider’s city, contrarian and tolerant by nature, a refuge apart from the state surrounding it.”