The LA Fires Made Me Think: Are We Ready for the Next Big Change?
Los Angeles, a city of dreams, is now a symbol of resilience as it grapples with the devastation left by the recent wildfires.
Entire neighborhoods have been reduced to ashes, families are facing unimaginable losses, and the emotional toll is overwhelming.
Yet, in the midst of this tragedy, we’ve seen something extraordinary: people coming together to help each other, offering kindness and support when it’s needed most.
Our hearts go out to everyone affected by these fires. We’re deeply sorry for the losses and hardships you’re enduring.
A huge thank you to the firefighters, the unsung heroes who risk their lives to save others. Their bravery is nothing short of incredible.
We hope the rebuilding process is swift and brings back a sense of normalcy—though we know things may never feel the same again.
A Fragile Foundation
The destruction raises a tough question: why do we still build homes with materials that can’t withstand disasters like this?
The answer lies in what economists call the path dependence feedback loop.
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, when the U.S. was rapidly expanding, cheap wood was everywhere. It became the default material for building homes.
Wood was affordable, easy to work with, and created jobs in construction and carpentry.
Over time, wood wasn’t just a practical choice—it became a cultural symbol of the American family.
The image of a cozy wooden home with a picket fence is etched into our collective identity.
Even though concrete and steel are stronger and fireproof, the average American might say,
Yeah, but that’s not how I see a cozy family home.
This attachment to tradition is a form of cultural inertia—people stick with the old ways even when better options exist.
The Path Dependence Loop
The path dependence loop explains why it’s so hard to change.
Once society adopts a specific way of doing things, everything aligns to support that choice.
Craftsmen specialize in building wooden homes, manufacturers produce materials for wooden construction, and the whole system becomes optimized around that single path.
Shifting to something new—like concrete and steel—requires a massive overhaul of how we design, build, and think about homes.
It often takes a major disaster to break this cycle. After the Great Fire of San Francisco in 1906, the city declared, “Enough is enough,” and rebuilt using fire-resistant materials like steel and concrete. It was a painful but necessary wake-up call.
A World in Flux
The LA fires are a stark reminder of how quickly everything we rely on can change.
Just as these fires have forced us to question how we build our homes, they also serve as a metaphor for the upheaval we’re seeing in marketing and the business world.
The rapid pace of change is both thrilling and terrifying, leaving many of us wondering: What’s the next big disruption, and how do we prepare for it?
One of the most transformative “fires” in the business world has been the rise of AI. Over the past few years, AI has completely reshaped how we approach marketing, business strategy, and even creativity itself.
Tools like ChatGPT have become indispensable, reaching 100 million users in just two months—a speed unheard of with previous innovations.
This rapid adoption shows how quickly we’ve had to adapt, but it also highlights how many of our old ways of working no longer apply.
The AI Revolution: A New Era in Marketing
Not long ago, SEO was a cornerstone of digital marketing. Entire careers were built on helping websites rank higher on search engines.
But as AI evolves, SEO has lost much of its impact.
The techniques that worked for decades are now obsolete, and marketing specialists with 25 years of experience are finding their skills less relevant in a world where algorithms and automation dominate.
It’s unsettling to realize how much has already changed—and how much more is coming.
Businesses are scrambling to figure out how to navigate this new landscape, where AI tools can generate content, analyze data, and even predict customer behavior faster and more accurately than ever before.
