Meta-crisis computing and you : Finding agency through the Two Loops model of change

Laurell Thorslund, Minna and Bates, Oliver and Eriksson, Elina and Pargman, Daniel and Biørn-Hansen, Aksel and Bakhshoudeh, Fatemeh and Rajendran Menon, Arjun (2025) Meta-crisis computing and you : Finding agency through the Two Loops model of change. In: AAR '25: Proceedings of the sixth decennial Aarhus conference: Computing X Crisis :. ACM, DNK, pp. 127-139. ISBN 9798400720031

Abstract

The multiple unfolding crises that threaten life on Earth keep many of us awake at night and leave us at a loss about how to meaningfully respond. Much of humanity’s efforts to address the crises are ultimately aimed at upholding the current unsustainable paradigm of infinite growth and exploitation of both natural resources and humans. In this paper, we offer the Two Loops model of change as a framework for understanding the interrelated crises of our times – the meta-crisis – to help us find clues for personal agency and also hope. Notably, Two Loops asks us to face the need for hospicing and grieving what is dying, reorienting computing to work to what comes after and what must be protected and saved. We work through the model’s various spaces for agency, i.e. innovating, naming, connecting, nurturing, illuminating in the emergent System; and stewarding, hospicing, composting and transitioning in the dying dominant System. We suggest examples and clues as to where computing and HCI professionals’ agency might lie in and between the two Systems in terms of skills, tools, practices and projects. Moving forward, we welcome a deeper, large-scale collaborative mapping of the possible contributions of our profession, to include all the different specialisms of our field in the picture of how we can be of service to liveable futures.