Originally written on LinkedIn Profile
Since the 2016 election of Donald Trump’s presidency, I’ve noticed in steady trend of doom, it centers itself in our digital landscape and we “doomscroll” in reaction. Doom is so all pervasive that in 2018, the figure of the Doomer acted as a virtual screen for us to project our despair onto and which was, in turn, reflected back onto us, transmutating us into Doomers with no end in sight. This trend has shifted again as we appraoch 2024, now Doom, fueled by AI and Large Language Models, seems to be spewing out from the virutal into the actual, changing the material world to function as its positive feedback loops.
Borrowed from the field of Cybernetics by Accelerationists, feedback loops are systems in which circuits either try to maintain and/or lower a constant the state of energy (negative) or circuits excite themselves to raise the state of energy. A simple example of negative feedback loops is air conditioning, a system that adjusts the temperature to maintain a set level. On the other hand, positive feedback loops amplify changes and can lead to self-reinforcing cycles leading to intensively compressing thresholds, which is what we see now with the nacent Doom Loop.
The Doom Loop, first discovered by NYU professor Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh in 2022, is an urban predicament accelerated by AI and remote work, begins with the decline of physical office spaces due to technological acceleration. As office buildings lose occupancy, property values plummet, impacting businesses reliant on foot traffic. Decreased economic activity leads to a rise in crime rates, creating a cycle that further depresses property values. As Nancy Bernholz writes, “For nonprofits and philanthropy, that might mean lower rents, increased community needs, reduced tax bases, and fewer public services. They may also be involved in efforts to help counteract the cycle through artistic or cultural events.” This self-reinforcing loop is too multifaceted of a challenge to face with one sided resistances, it necessitates a comprehensive approach.
If the feverish acceleration and subsequent stagnation of cultural feedback loops in the 2000s-2010s taught us anything, it’s that there are no absolute solutions, simply sites of resistences. Nonetheless those resistences involve fostering mixed-use developments, enhancing community engagement, and implementing an ethical and philosophical position. The interconnected tensions of the Doom Loop, of economic decline and rising crime, one might be tempted to retreat to comfort foods and pastel mood boards, but for me, Lebanon Hanover’s wisdom rings true: embracing sadness can be a rebellion, acknowledging perpetual resilience in the face of urban doom.
tl;dr in the face of doom; share and light the room
