Haunted by an idea
Designing while the red light keeps flashing
Lately I've been exploring something that feels urgent yet impossible to articulate – the idea of design hauntology. Not just design as aesthetic or problem-solving, but design as it exists within late-stage capitalism and ecological collapse. I have the insane idea of writing a book on the uncanny era that design is situated in.
There's this moment in Fisher's work where he describes our current situation aptly: We're entrenched in a digital communicative apparatus, a sort of parasite, this low-level but persistent interference that destroys all other forms of enjoyment, that makes it impossible to be fully present in any moment without a red light flashing, demanding our attention, anxiety inducing.
The urgency of collapse – ecological, social, economic – sits alongside the weirdness of business as usual. Climate scientists publish reports about collapse while we debate about if the language is too strong. Biodiversity loss is happening while we optimize user experiences of AI chatbots so someone can generate a racist meme. The future gets colonized while we iterate on solutions to problems that shouldn't exist in the first place.
What does it mean to design when the future feels foreclosed? When every creative decision is haunted by the ghosts of what we've lost (stable climate, economic security, collective imagination) and the specters of what we'll never have (the futures we were promised but we chose to automate marketing instead)?
I keep thinking about Fisher's observation that "everything has changed but nothing has really happened". Technological upgrades have taken the place of cultural development. We have infinite connectivity but diminishing connection.
The designer exists in this liminal space, caught between nostalgia for some idealistic past and mourning for sustainable futures that seem increasingly impossible. We're designing in the crisis, for the crisis, sometimes as the ruins. Corporate sustainability theater. Green capitalism's uncanny valley. The performance of care while the machine devours the world.
The more I think about it, design theory needs to grapple with the reality that we're designing in the crisis, for the crisis, sometimes as the crisis. Maybe what we need is new frameworks for thinking about design's role in/after/against this moment. Design as a practice of mourning and memory. Design for collapse, for the end of the world as we know it. Design that grapples with precarity not as a bug but as a feature of our current system.
Because the alternative (the insane speed of the hyper-complex digital machine) feels like another form of the same experiment. Another way of not knowing what we're getting into.
What does it mean to design when we're already in the ruins? Do you identify with what I am trying to say? If you are interested in knowing more about the subject feel free to reach out!