CONCEPT
Accelerationism
The political-philosophical stance that technological and social change should be intensified rather than restrained — a framework the Techno-Optimist Manifesto articulates in its contemporary Silicon Valley form.
Accelerationism names a family of positions united by the claim that the appropriate response to technological and social change is intensification rather than restraint. The term has roots in mid-twentieth-century French theory (Deleuze and Guattari's work on capitalism), was developed through the UK CCRU in the 1990s, and has emerged in distinct right-wing, left-wing, and centrist variants. Its contemporary Silicon Valley form — effective accelerationism, or e/acc — treats AI development as the paradigmatic case in which acceleration is morally required, and treats deceleration as the actual existential risk. Andreessen's Techno-Optimist Manifesto articulates this contemporary accelerationist position in its most compressed public form.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The term's genealogy runs through several distinct traditions. Deleuze and Guattari's Anti-Oedipus (1972) contained the enigmatic suggestion that capitalism's tendencies should be accelerated rather than resisted — a passage whose interpretation remains contested. The Cybernetic Culture Research Unit at Warwick in the 1990s, around Nick Land and Sadie Plant, developed a more explicit accelerationist framework that anticipated many later formulations.