Sorry it has taken me a bit to get my butt into gear here at SXSW 09. The Film portion of the week is almost over and many of my friends will be heading out Since reviews started going up before the fest, I suppose they will be pretty much done with their coverage. I can’t keep up with that pace anymore so look for my coverage in the coming days.

But this leads me into my thoughts about We Live in Public (it won the Jury prize at Sundance and I just caught it). Even though I don’t have the high profile of friends like AJ, Karina, Eugene or Brian, on occasion, there is someone who has read something I’ve written and they introduce themselves and say something along the lines of wanting to meet me. It just happened to me today. It’s an incredible honor when someone says that and I haven’t once taken it for granted (though I do have the terrible habit of forgetting names – I need help with this, any suggestions?). But my minor “rock star” experience is both like and unlike Josh Harris’s, which is the biopic fodder for We Live in Public. It really resonated with me.

Harris was one of the original internet rock stars, like, before the rest of us even knew what the internet was–he peeked early. He reminds me a lot of people I know these days: people who make lots of money by tuning into the internet and creating businesses that will serve the online community. Harris, as a web visionary, foresaw all of what is happening today and even further. Yet his vision seems to be a self-fulling prophecy, as he had spent time broadcasting his entire life over the net. His story suggests  that as more of us turn inward to our computers and digital lives, the higher chance we are going to be controlled by some unknown master (my conspiracy theory mind goes to the Republicans, but that couldn’t be true, could it?). Or at least that seemed like the general thesis to me. I’m open to disagreements on this.

In any case, Josh Harris gets his kicks out of performing for the cameras–as long as he has an audience and he is making tons of money doing it. He is a man of extremes. He doesn’t know when enough is enough, or where one reality ends and another begins. The people that I admire the most are people who can move with ease from their work life to their personal life, and so much of the online experience is our work. There has to be life outside of work, or online. I’ve been working on my ability to turn the computer and TV off and go out the door and do something, hence lighter blogging.

Harris also struggles with that dichotomy, going from completely public to entirely private. I think that I “get” the guy, but it’s a pretty bleak outlook on life and the way we live, or might live in the future if more people don’t quite playing computer games and return to the land of people.

Which oddly brings me to another screening I went to today. One more show of We Live in Public tomorrow morning! You should go if you are really into this online thing.

The land of people is what I experienced  in Letters to the President by Petr Lom.