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“ Our present over-commitment to technics is in part due to a radical misinterpretation of the whole course of human development ”
The Techno-Capitalist Progress Narrative
The accelerationist perspective may be considered as the continuation of a long line in Western philosophical thinking regarding the combined power of capitalism and technology. The same moral imperative described in relation to AI is commonly applied to the acceleration of tech development more broadly: supporters assert that it is a good and right course of action, as the speeding up of our processes of growth and innovation will minimize the suffering and injustice of the present.
The accelerationist approach, however, does not address the question of how to stop our attempts at problem solving via tech innovation from causing worse problems in the future. Nor does it seriously address the increasing scale and impact of negative externalities. In this way, the techno-optimist and accelerationist worldviews are simply another instantiation of an immature idea of progress that turns away from the real world in favor of a compelling, yet incomplete and ultimately destructive narrative.
Constituent Concepts
Techno-Capitalism: This term describes the fusion of advanced technology and market capitalism into a single, self-reinforcing engine. It is an economic configuration where the accumulation of capital is driven primarily by the commodification of technological knowledge and intellectual property. In this system, technology is not just a tool for production but the central logic of the market, turning innovation into a relentless imperative for profit rather than a means to specific human ends.
'Progress': In the critical context of the Consilience Project, "Progress" is identified as a mythic narrative rather than an objective fact. It is the linear belief that history moves inevitably toward improvement, driven by scientific and material expansion. This narrative often acts as a blindfold, framing the destruction of the biosphere and the erosion of community merely as temporary "costs" on the road to a technological utopia, ignoring the possibility that we may be progressing efficiently toward a cliff.
Accelerationism: Originally a philosophical fringe theory (Land, Fisher), Accelerationism posits that the only way out of capitalism's contradictions is to push them to their absolute limit. It argues that we should not resist the dissolving forces of technology and capital but accelerate them—speeding up automation, alienation, and disruption—to trigger a radical transformation (or collapse) that births a post-capitalist future. It is the strategy of "burning through" the current order to reach the other side.
Silicon Ideologies
Effective Accelerationism (e/acc): A modern, pragmatic offshoot of accelerationism popular in Silicon Valley, e/acc equates the thermodynamic growth of complexity and intelligence with the moral good. It argues that stalling AI or technological development is not just a mistake but a "sin" against entropy. Its proponents believe that maximizing the speed of innovation is the only way to solve humanity's problems and colonize the stars, viewing safety regulations as harmful brakes on the engine of cosmic destiny.
Techno-Optimism: This is the worldview that technology is the primary driver of positive change and that essentially all human problems (ecological, social, political) have technical solutions. It assumes a benevolent trajectory where more invention equals more well-being. Critics argue this view is dangerously reductive, as it ignores the political choices that determine who benefits from technology, assuming that tools will automatically fix the structural injustices they often reinforce.
Progress (Studies) Movement: An intellectual movement (Cowen, Collison) dedicated to studying the causes of human prosperity—scientific, industrial, and organizational—to understand how to replicate and speed them up. While often rigorous, it is criticized for focusing heavily on metrics of material abundance (GDP, energy usage, lifespan) while often under-theorizing the "shadows" of progress, such as existential risk, psychological atomization, and environmental degradation.
Ideology Critique
Cultural Hegemony (Gramsci): t is a form of social domination that operates not by force, but by establishing a "common sense" that legitimizes the power of Big Tech. By framing specific political choices (like surveillance or automation) as neutral, natural laws of evolution, this hegemony conditions the public to accept the dominance of these systems as the only possible reality, rendering resistance futile.
Counter-hegemony is the strategic construction of an alternative ethical and social framework to challenge the dominant techno-capitalist narrative. It involves creating a new "common sense" that rejects the equation of efficiency with morality and profit with progress. It seeks to delegitimise the status quo by asserting that technology should be democratically shaped to serve human autonomy and public good, rather than capital accumulation. It is the active building of a culture that prioritizes social values over technical imperatives.
Traditional intellectuals are the members of the "prevailing intelligentsia" —such as futurists, mainstream economists, and corporate thought leaders—who view themselves as neutral observers but functionally serve to legitimize the existing social order. By framing the specific trajectory of high-tech capitalism as an inevitable, value-free evolution, normalizing the status quo and dismissing structural critique. They act as the "deputies" of the ruling class, articulating the "Techno-Capitalist Apology" to convince the public that market-driven technological acceleration is synonymous with human progress
System-Justifying Belief-Systems: In social psychology, this refers to the cognitive bias where individuals defend and rationalize the status quo, even when it operates against their own interests. In this context, the narrative of "technological inevitability" functions as a system-justifying belief. It convinces people that the current trajectory of unrestrained tech development is "natural," "neutral," or "unavoidable," thereby discouraging political resistance or alternative imaginings of the future.
The Techno-Capitalist Apology & Legitimising Myths (Joseph in The New Human Rights Movement): The Techno-Capitalist Apology is a modern legitimising myth —a narrative used to protect the status quo—which falsely attributes the fruits of technological efficiency (ephemeralization) to the mechanisms of the market economy. Proponents, or "apologists," argue that because technology naturally drives costs down and efficiency up, capitalism is successfully evolving toward an equitable, post-scarcity world and requires only minor adjustments. Joseph argues this view is a delusion that confuses market efficiency (maximizing profit and turnover) with technical efficiency (maximizing design and utility), ignoring the reality that the market structurally requires scarcity, waste, and cyclical consumption to function, thus actively inhibiting the true potential of abundance.
World-Systems Theories of History
Modernisation Theory: Dominant in the mid-20th century, this theory posits that all societies progress through a single, linear path of development—from "traditional" (agrarian/rural) to "modern" (industrial/urban/democratic). It implies that the Western model of techno-industrial capitalism is the universal endpoint of human evolution. It is criticized for being Eurocentric and for ignoring how the "development" of the West often relied on the "underdevelopment" of the rest of the world.
Dependency Theory: The critical counter-narrative to Modernisation Theory. It argues that resources flow from a "periphery" of poor, underdeveloped states to a "core" of wealthy states, enriching the latter at the expense of the former. It suggests that global inequality is not a stage of "lagging behind" but a structural feature of the world system: the "progress" of the techno-capitalist core is actively funded by the exploitation of the periphery's resources and labor.
Externalisation & Negative Externalities: The "progress" narrative often relies on not counting externalities, creating an illusion of efficiency that is actually just successful theft from the commons/future. From a systems perspective, this is a boundary failure where a subsystem (like a corporation or industry) treats itself as an "open system" regarding output, dumping entropy (waste, pollution, social disorder) into the larger environment without a feedback loop to correct the damage. The subsystem optimizes its own internal stability by exporting instability to the larger super-system (the biosphere or society). Because the feedback signal (harm) is delayed or displaced outside the subsystem's sensory boundary, the subsystem perceives itself as efficient and successful, even as it actively degrades the substrate it relies on for long-term survival.
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