accelerationism is back and tech elites are making it cringier than it already was (e/acc)
If you've been surfing the tech sphere lately, you may have come across the term e/acc or effective accelerationism as if it was something new. But like most of these tech elite driven ideologies, it's largely a mutation of more naive and sometimes sinister trends. For this episode I spoke to Adam Jones, host of Acid Horizon and Zer0 Books and Repeater Media and author of Anti-Oculus. Anti-Oculus is a psychedelic trip through the eyes of power, exploring avenues of escaping systems of contr...
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Transcript
Alright. Hi, everyone. You are listening to the Blockchain Socials podcast. I'm Josh, and I'm here with Adam Jones, who is a cohost of Asset Horizon and as well, Zero Books and Repeater Media. And he's also the author of a recent book called Antioculus. Antioculus is a psychedelic trip through the eyes of power, exploring avenues of escaping systems of control in our cyberpunk reality. It's a book that's also come that has come out through Repeater Books, which I also published my own book through. And I was also recently on Acid Horizon to talk with Adam, about blockchain radicals if you want to check it out. But today in this episode, we really wanted to cover the, let's say the, what what is it right? I don't even know what right adjective to, like, describe what this conversation is going to be like. But we're gonna be talking about accelerationism. And you may have seen accelerationism, you know, become bigger and more popular, mentioned a whole lot more, not even just in the crypto world, but also in mainstream media. I saw that, Lex Fridman had, the guy who used to be known as Beth Jezoz. His real name is Guillaume Verdun, Canadian guy who believes similar to a lot of Silicon Valley VCs that technology should be uninhibited by any sort of state or government regulation or any type of moral or ethical kind of considerations that should be accelerated into, you know, whatever the peak of technological capabilities we can ever reach to get to these singularity. And so we're going to talk about accelerationism because this is actually an older concept that this, kind of tech bro has kind of, I guess, co opted into his own, his own uses. But we also want to talk about, or I would like to talk about as well, the concept of capitalist realism, which comes from Mark Fisher. All this stuff may sound confusing right now, but we're going to make sense of it. So, yeah. Hi, Adam. Thanks for coming. Maybe to start off, would you want to give us a bit of a primer on what is kind of like the core of accelerationist theory? Where does it come from?
Absolutely. Well, thank you for having me. So accelerationism is a sort of political theory. Well, it's also a a metaphysical theory. It's a theory of time as well that shows up predominantly in, UK in the nineties when a lot of, very sort of postmodern French theory, so people like Deleuze and Guattari, Jean Francois Lyotard become translated into English. And to to to does what it says on the tin, to be honest, when it comes to the the the tactical accelerationism, which is to speed up something in order to achieve a certain end. Now this is the limit of the commonalities most forms of accelerationism share. Because in the nineties, the the kind of accelerations that first comes about is kind of lurking very much in sort of leftist and Marxist circles. Some people read Mark as an accelerationist for example, when he says that in his fragment on machines, that eventually machines will sort of replace workers, and we can therefore collectivize the the the results of scientific progress. Or when he says, in a speech once that in order to hasten the revolution, he would vote in favor of free trade because that accelerates the various tensions of capitalism, makes revolution more likely. Of course you can take these out of context and make these say various things but that's one way people take it. But in the nineties in particular, a lot of it comes from this sort of academic, para academic collective called the CCRU, the Cybernetic Cultural Research Unit. And for them, it it was a theory of time because and let's just sort of break this down because theory of time is it gets quite metaphysical. But essentially, one of the the things that they believe, and you can read this actually online in, a thesis by one of the members of the CCIU called, it's called capitalism's transcendental time machine by Anna Greenspan, is that capitalism or modernity in general inaugurates a new way of thinking about time. And it'll and an and a new way of producing time, a new way of regimenting the time of our lives according to the integration of time keeping practices like the clock, and also the global thing of time zones spread with, various empires and imperialisms, such as GMT, which is kind of the standard by which time zones are measured. And in order for this to happen, the CCIU sort of gambits was that they had to capitalism had to ally itself with new technologies of timekeeping. And this is incredibly the case in terms of speeding up transactions, particularly using computers. And in the nineties what was the big fear about computers, the things which regimented international transactions, the entire financial market, the entire services economy, well this was the y two k bug. Now the y two k bug for those who don't know is essentially when, every com each computer has an inbuilt clock, which has a inbuilt calendar, It only has, within it the last two digits of the year. And so the the reason why this is a problem is because 1900 and 2000 both appear as two zeros to a computer. If nineteen o one would be zero one, nineteen o two would be zero two, 1900 and 2000 would both be zero. And this would short circuit, supposedly the the internal clocks, the internal regimentations of the entire every computer on the planet. And the worry with this is that, well, if that happens, then capitalism hits a brick wall. It hits the four zero four. It hits a blue screen, essentially. Because all the ways in which we regiment time through computers, transactions, communications, and also therefore labor time, the time which we we spend extracting value, the time which workers are paid, the time for which workers have to surrender their lives to producing value, that becomes kind of worthless. And the CCIU's tactics then was to essentially accelerate by finding ways to ally themselves with these technologies such that capitalism hits this brick wall and kind of explodes. Now the reason why they thought this is because they have a view of capitalism which is quite, cybernetic. But what I mean by that, I mean I mean that capitalism has a kind of a positive feedback loop structure where it makes because capital is money that makes money. You know, it makes money. You capitalize on something by making more of it out of itself through the mediation of commodities and exchange. Now there's also a negative feedback loop within capitalism, which is there's usually a state mechanism or something where that the process of capitalization or capital accumulation is regulated, slows down a bit so it can have some time to recuperate without burning itself out, you know. For example, the brick wall of I mean, people across the world were work make it were working to make sure this y two k explosion didn't happen because it was a literal time bomb. It was in the capital itself. And so in order to do that, there was vast efforts across the world to to rectify any computational problems, so it didn't happen and it didn't, or there was no chance of it happening. And so the idea is that for accelerationism, you sort of accelerate. You, you intensify a positive feedback loop in order to break before in, a negative feedback process can can hit can basically come in and stop it. You need to outrun the system's own self regulation so you can break through to the other side of it. And for them, to break through the other side of capitalism would also speed breakthrough of capitalism's way it organizes our time. And it would and if it does that for the CCOU, it also breaks through our experience of time, and therefore breaks through the very conditions under which we experience time. Our very kind of human way of experiencing things, which is something that they think, arrives on the scene at the same time as capitalism. The the current modern experience of time, they see reflected in very sort of standard modern philosophers like Kant, who do set the stage for a lot of future philosophy, and they see this revolution in philosophy happening at the same time as developments in in timekeeping. So that that's accelerationism as we know it. You intensify a positive feedback loop to break through something that's holding it back before it can get there. And that's the that's the that's the raw theory of it, but of course it develops a lot more there. So I'll pause it for now.
Right. Right. So it's kind of like, at this point, it's a very kind of like abstract, like it's not necessarily making any, or I guess we could say like normative claim on like how to do that or what to do specifically, which is what has led to kind of like all these, you know, hundreds or thousands of variations of different types of accelerationism focused on like particular thing. But one thing I'm curious about with this kind of theory, because often it is framed in this way that is accelerationism, is it always a kind of like, like, it gives images of like apocalypse, I guess you can say, and like apocalyptical views of like that one day, like things are going to collapse that's and we need to, and that there is some acknowledgements that perhaps there is a need for breaking the current system, which would lead to like a period of, you know, where we don't really know what to do in order to like create something new.
There is absolutely. I mean, one of the first accelerationist journals, this kind of theory was called collapse. And you could just don't purchase that over at Urbanomic if you if you're so inclined. I mean, the apocalyptic aspects of it, I mean, the fact that a lot of accelerationist theory, and at this point we have to talk about, I guess, Nick Land, is written in the form of a cyberpunk, dystopia. It's theory as cyberpunk fiction. And there was a sense in which they want to end the world as we know it, which is the world in the form of the bourgeois sort of human modern way of looking at the world. And they wanted to embrace this because that means that they would stop being the kind of subjects confined within the flesh, confined within the the bourgeois dynamics of family, faith, flag, whatever whatever fascist way you wanna put it, and that would be raptured. Because there was, there was a lot of futurism in this, in this work, particularly the CCIU, which kinda gets underlooked, which is there were members of the CCIU who wrote on Afrofuturism, escaping sort of free new musical cultures like jungle. There was I mean, the first founder of the CCIU, Sadie Plant, wrote her book zeros on ones, which is basically about how sort of computation, in its history is ultimately, something that's quite, feminine coded. And there are ways in which digitality allows, for kind of escape from the confines of of femininity that patriarchy has a control over. And so there there are incredible so much of futurisms going through this. And if it requires a collapse of something, it require it only advocates for a collapse of something which it thinks is already on either on its last legs or should be.
Yeah. Cause oftentimes, like, I think there there's also like, I don't know, accelerationism I've heard in terms of like, kinda like, race wars and like kind of like really, really apocalyptical, imagery of the world referencing like different, like kind of terrorist manifestos or whatever. But it comes from also, I mean, like a very Marxist kind of view of history, I feel, that there is a well, a lot of it is, like, inspired by Joe Deloz, who's also, like, I mean, for me, an inspiration for, like, a lot of the things that I wrote in my book. It just gets kind of, you know, people can take it in many different directions. But is it like kind of a, would you say it's in some ways like a post Marxist kind of, at least in, like, normal accelerationism, is it a kind of post Marxist, strand, I guess, or like?
If we were to take it out of the academy and sort of power academia and yeah. As you said, the the the fascist terrorists who do call themselves accelerationists. And they may even be landlians, but what they mean is that, yeah, they want to spark spark race wars. I mean, to this extent, we could even call someone like Charles Manson of an accelerationist. I mean, that was kind of what he wanted to do after whole helter skelter nonsense. And that that label, people people have claimed it. I mean, it's it's it's not a lot it it's not they're not accelerationists. They're not accelerationists of any sort of kind of the the theory of what of its origin. But in terms of a a matter of tactic, are they are they trying to sort to enhance a positive feedback loop? I mean, in terms of they're trying to inspire others to do the same thing. Absolutely. That's just that's just a positive feedback loop anyway. But, I mean, that that's where acceleration gets kind of trivial. You know? Who doesn't want to do more of the thing they think should happen? And this is why I think it's best to keep it as a theory of time. But in in in colloquial terms, absolutely, these people are. And that's kind of the messiness. But in terms of a post Marxist, it depends who you ask as well. I mean, Mark Fisher thought that Marxism was inherently accelerationist, in his paper, Terminator versus Avatar. People who are accelerationist Marxisms, less so than they used to be. There was famously that manifesto for an accelerationist politics, which Alex Williams and Nick Srnachek wrote. And that's a very different kind of left accelerationism. To summarize it sort of briefly, it is very similar to the Marxism of you need to increase or accelerate the productive forces so that they become so abundant, so we can have a red plenty. We can, seize the means of production, then we can make them so productive that, the conditions of private property of that which is scarcity is no you know, for example, of one condition is no longer necessary. And there there is something of that also in Mark Fisher's work too in in, acid communism. And, of course, the the Italian Marxists, the autonomists, who are kind of, yeah, to some extent post Marxist of the nineteen seventies, who are to seize the means of production and make abundance for all. And you can even see this, well, in the effective accelerationists who make the same gambits. But the difference between them and the post Marxist is this is a political program to be directly implemented through a political sort of class struggle. Whereas some accelerationisms think the technology will do this of its own accord, will make so much that capitalists will go, well, damn, my money's not worth anything anymore, which is, of course, nonsense because artificial scarcity is is really the the the political level of control there.
Yeah. Well well, I think if that's, one of the things I wanted to just like cover our bases as far as like kind of distinguishing what acceleration is and like how it relates to kind of like left wing thoughts, is of course needing to talk about Mark Fisher, who is often kind of brought as kind of like the the opposite of Nick Land in in many ways, but still within this milieu of the CCRU and the accelerationism. Usually that's kind of like how you determine like left versus right. You're more on the Nick Land side, who is all who Nick Land, kind of, as far as I understand, kind of accepts a lot of the, like, Marxists, description of the world and the economy and political economy. He just chooses the side of the capitalist class as the one that's almost like he's on the side of the robots, essentially, on the side of, technological capital. Whereas, Mark is not. That's kind of how you determine left and right as far as I understand. And Mark Fisher was a very influential, writer for me, especially, especially his his book, Capitalist Realism. I was wondering if you can talk a bit about capitalist realism, what that is, and how that relates to accelerationism.
Absolutely. So, capitalist realism is essentially a pervasive atmosphere that constrains thought and action within a a horizon which is delimited in advance by capitalist ideology. It is it is summed up in a phrase which Mark popularized, but he takes from either of Jameson or Zizek or both, which is that under capitalist realism, it is easier to imagine the end of the world than is the end of capitalism. The subtitle of the book is, you know, capitalist realism, is there no alternative? Well, it just describes a kind of malaise by which our imaginations are captured even to the extent of which our protests against capital, one, could be done through capitalist lenses. You know, you can buy your anti capitalism and cut but also in the sense in which our our visions of the future are to return to a kind of a cap free a still capitalist social democracy, you know, some of an increased welfare state like I mean, this was this was quite a pessimistic period of of of of Fisher's writing. And this was written in 2000 and well, written in 2008. It was published and finished around 2009. And this was people forget this is under it's under a a new Labour government, a a Blairite government, where the opposition has fully conceded there is no alternative, and they're not interested in incubating any other visions of a future. So capitalist realism in its endurance is this idea. One of the components is, for example, it's called business ontology, which is where you believe that the categories of everything that exists are explainable in terms of business. And therefore, you have to run everything like factorism. You have to run everything like a market or what he calls market Stalinism, where you're competing, but you also have to constantly produce reports about yourself. And he was thinking very much about sort of public sector workers having to produce reports and having to be contractors and having to be outsourcing various things to the so called markets. It's it's it's a book that still really does stand the test time, and sadly will probably come into more relevance in The UK as our as our next Blairite government rolls in. But in relationship to accelerationism, there is a mention of Nick Land in the book really, but it it's it's almost feels like a bit of a defeat of accelerationism in that moment, at least the moment when it's writing because we haven't accelerated out of this. The sort of the techno future, promised to us by these, you know, these new technologies we can escape from ourselves into the online. You know, cyberspace can shatter the boundaries of the human and the inhuman. But what do we get instead? We get kind of we get, you know, the sludge content. We get what he calls the e dipod, where there's actually technology has becomes a way of just constantly stating all of these new, you know, needs, desires it gives you to, I mean, help. That's, I mean, that's what we do. We're on Twitter. You know, if we're on Twitter, we're producing content. There's a recuperation of that. And the book is really a book that's trying to challenge the power of belief, at the same time as it accepts the Zizekian thesis that capitalism also works regardless of whether we believe in it. What it matters is we don't believe in anything else. And that is kind of the impetus that really spurs Marc onto his later projects and eventually acid communism, which is, not detached from this, but it is a a more optimistic book. And it does tie it does return to this kind of accelerationism because this idea of red plenty. We need to start a pot he's because he wants to start a positive feedback loop of consciousness raising from a socialist, feminist, Marxist lens to really take the strands of, the past, which were oppressed by a capitalist present, and then accelerate them past the repression that capitalism, like, holds us down, like, a hold of that. That it it it prevents its actualization to basically punch through that. And that's, I think, some return of acceleration, isn't there? But that that's that's capitalist realism. Sorry for rambling a bit.
No. Sure. Yeah. I think, but kind of with that as well is that, you kind of references this, like, red plenty future, which I know, I think you mentioned in the, I think you potentially mentioned in the interview that you did, on asset horizon about, about the techno optimist optima manifest, which we'll talk about in a minute about like the kind of automated post work future, during the autonomous Italian autonomous movements seemed like something that was actually possible back then in the seventies, which now it's very difficult to imagine that all of this new technological innovation that's coming out. I mean, just if you look at right now with AI or whatever else, it's like people are saying are going to, potentially bring about this like more abundant future. Like probably if it is successful and it does work that you're not, you're like, as a worker, you're not going to get any of those benefits from that, that it's strictly going to be, is it basically just going to intensify the competition between, the tween workers and that the ones who it's just so funny. Like when I go through AI, like so many people are like, I'm not afraid about the future, with AI. It just means that, like, we're not going to lose our jobs. It just means that people who use AI will be three times more productive. And like, I don't know, I don't understand how they, like, don't make the connection. We do those things. If that is like, if that is the future that's going to be created, you know, it's a bit, that is a bit, a bit strange, but, this also comes from, I mean, there is like a more positive, you know, if we if you look at that at least history of where that was, a potential possibility, there was this also, the history of the Russian cosmists, which I was wondering if you can maybe, expand on a little bit.
So one of the forefathers of accelerationism so much that, his works are put in the accelerationist reader, which if folks are interested in accelerationism, pick that up. It's an amazing collection. It's so this was a man called Nikolai Fedorov, or Feodorov, depending on how you want to anglicize it from the Cyrillic. He was a Russian Orthodox, priest, and he came up with his philosophy, what he called the philosophy of the common task. And it it's a very moralistic philosophy, but it's essentially, our moral duty is to essentially undo death, defeat death. And it's at most of him, it's based in familial duty. We have our duty to our family and to everyone around. We have a duty to humanity as such, particularly to the family, to, bring back all of our relatives from the dead, to do anything to help our relatives dead or alive. Because for further of death is only a it is not a necessary condition, it's a temporary condition, which is based, of course, in this Christian belief that death has been defeated and death is not ontologically necessary to be in the world. So how are we gonna do this? We accelerate science and technology. We go off into the stars. We start harnessing the power of entire solar systems, and we direct the entire course of humanity to ending death, ending suffering, basically making heaven. And the there's there is nothing more common, more universal, more unifying to Fedorov than this task of defeating death through science and through total controls natural world. And this was very influential on the on the left in, Russia, particularly the group. Yeah. As you said, the the Russian cosmists or bio cosmists, which were a faction in that revolution. And also, I guess, to some extent as well on some early struggles. I mean, it was possibly not with federal, but there was some early very cybernetic thinkers who and cybernetics is always very close to accelerationism in the Baltic party. Almost extent of Lenin, almost, you know, there was a power struggle between Lenin and this man, Alexander Bogdanov, who comes up with this theory of textology, which is a very early form of cybernetics. And he was one of the people that might have come leader of the Bolsheviks pre revolution. And so that that's kind of the influence there. And when I look at techno optimism and effective accelerationism, and also some parts of left acceleration, it does have this aspect of we need to take the brakes off of technology because technology is the thing which saves us.
Yeah. I think it just it is interesting to note that, like, I don't know. Was was actually was Fedorov a was he a communist?
No. No. He he it's just an extension of of moral duty and he formed the universals of moral duty, so family into each other. So that would be the the for him, the logical extension of that.
Okay. But he was, I mean, this was during the time of the Soviet Union.
Just just before.
Just before. I It is interesting that I think that, like, Yeah. There is kind of, like, when we get into accelerationism and techno optimism, there is, like, kind of this history on the left of things that are very similar. And, like, it's very funny that you mentioned Fedorov just because there has been, like, it's getting there is just like a section of people in crypto who are also into basically viewing death as a disease is what they say. And like kind of the moral imperative is that we need to figure out how to be immortal. Which I also had a lot of problems with, but that's for a different episode. But that was interesting that that is influential for, for, maybe some people on the Left as well. But, Yeah. So let's talk a bit about, effective accelerationism. So this is kinda like the newest strand of a self declared accelerationism that is explicitly pro technology at all cost. It was created by this guy who went by the pseudonym, Bap Jaizos, who has now been doxed. The name is Guillaume Mordan, who is a, he has like a, an AI startup. Not sure exactly what it does, but he was inspired. He said explicitly that he was inspired by Musk to be a techno optimist, Elon Musk, just, you know, kind of classic tech bro kind of inspiration. Effective accelerationism, EAC, is a kind of, basically a strand, as I understand it, of effective altruism, which comes from the rationalist mint, which is a very like tech bro heavy kind of space. You have, what's his name? Scott Alexander, like slate star codex type of, people and readers. And then of course, you also have recently or, like, not so recent anymore, I guess, Sam Bankman Fried, who was the guy CEO of FTX. He was a big proponent of effective altruism and there, but, the effective acceleration isms are kind of a a split to be even more pro markets, very pro AI and especially the creation of AGI as being this like moral imperative of something that they have to achieve. Whereas SBF, Sandbank, Manfred, and other effective, altruists were more like somewhat worried about AI. So they were kind of like, I don't know to them, like to the, it's kind of like a funny, the effective accelerationists will say that like the, effective altruists people will be more, almost like communists because they're like pro regulating AI or something like that. So they're more ridiculous. But yeah, is, is in your reading of effective accelerationist, effective accelerationism, is there, like, a clear, like, link between what you perceive as your study of accelerationism and what these guys are calling effective accelerationism?
I mean, there's a definite link between, what what these guys think accelerationism is and what the can and and what I think accelerationism is. I mean, it there's no need to gatekeep the term so much. It it there is an it is an accelerationism. You put a slash, you put an a double c, and then you've called it EAC. It's out there now. You know? There's no there's no point, and you can't put that semiotic virus back in the tube, so to speak. Mhmm. I mean, I mean, hell, I've given theory of accelerationism before I even understood the temporal dynamics of it. So I'm not gonna say, well, you know, their theory of accelerationism hasn't got a theory of time, so it's not a good one. But in terms of the tactics of accelerate of accelerating, of engaging in a positive feedback loop, I mean, it isn't accelerationism. It's very much back I mean, to go to techno optics manifesto from Marc Andreessen, it's based on, a very surface reading of the gland. It's also based on Ray Kurzweil's, idea of the law of accelerating returns, which is a positive feedback loop. You, you know, you get, intensifying more and more returns from technology the more you invest in it. It it is an accelerationism because it wants to, acceleration, not because it's just engaging in a positive feedback loop, but it wants to also overcome a certain obstacle because ex, techno optimism or effect accelerationism declares itself much like Musk's to have enemies who are holding it back and therefore holding humanity back. Because humanity is identified with their with their market interests ultimately. I mean, you know, these they not to go to, you know, hermeneutics of suspicion, but, you know, they would say this, wouldn't they? Would they would they say anything else? Other you know? I I can't think of, you know, any sort of raw impunity that you could have being a tech bro guy given that, you know, we we had the the zero interest rates era. Yeah. Which you just got free money and that money made itself money. And if you're the head of a venture capital firm, I mean, what else are you going to believe? I mean, we I can't I can't blame them believing this, but we we can't be surprised that the the the ideology that grew out of this is just if you don't give me more of the exact thing that I'm doing, you're you're killing humanity. It's it's it's it's it's I don't want people to think I'm not giving it its due here. I we can go into the theory of it, but the theory itself is not very strong. I can get we can go into the presuppositions of it, but it's it's it's it's it's surface all the way down.
Yeah. Yeah. And let's let's let's, explain that a bit, for people maybe through the techno optimist manifesto, which was released back in October 2023, by Marc Andreessen, who is the founder or cofounder of, Andreessen Horowitz, like, largest venture capital firm, I think in the world. They now go by a 16 z. They invest in a shit ton of technological technology startups, especially in fintech, especially in crypto, especially in AI, especially in as well, weapons manufacturing. And, they have their own arms specifically for, like, defending American interests. Like it's, you know, but he's also someone who advocates for like, he's explicitly like libertarian, kind of advocate. And when he speaks, he also talks about like, you know, him being anti states, but also like very, very patriotic American and, you know, thinks that we need to defend America's interests and whoever else. But yeah, he lists in this manifesto, of course, he goes through, he identifies the enemies, what the solution is. A lot of it has, you know, spoiler alert, a lot of it has to do with making technology better, in kind of, like, every type of way possible and so very kind of abstract. He cites Beth Jezos, as well as Nick Land as patron saints of techno optimism. So yeah, he is, uninhibited use of creation, creation of technology, moral imperative for the good of humanity. But, yeah, I guess, what were your thoughts after going through it? I guess, was it, I mean, for you, I guess it was just something that was, yes. Still, were you expecting something more maybe be a better question than what you got out of it?
No. I was expecting something more than this. I've, I've seen better people try to do this kind of thing and it doesn't have a, it doesn't have a critical viewpoint on what technology is. I mean, there's there's a set opens with a section called lies, a section called truth, and it says that, you know, technology it says, we techno optimists believe that societies like sharks grow or die. Solar cancer cells. Also sharks that infinitely grow. They they live in the ocean. You don't see a constant white shark. But the idea of technology here as essentially you know, it says it's a way it's a lever on the world. Technology is the way to make more with less. That's a very service session of technology. It also doesn't have any theory of how technology comes about. It's almost kind of platonic. He's thinking, yeah, there are there yeah. Because you you can draw, right, a diagram of any machine you want. You can establish a functional relations between parts. In order for that diagram to be actualized, the schematic of the machine that works in theory, somebody has to lose a fight, by which I mean, there has to be a political situation in which, you can get workers, you can get resources, you can have the sister relations of who owns what in the production chain to bring it into actualization. That put me out of politics of of technology in a sense precedes its coming into being, because a part of the political situation has to be there in order for it to arrive on the scene. And he just thinks that technology is just he thinks it is human nature. And what he means by that is tech human nature is technology. Technology is human nature. It is, I I really it's it's so surface level. When you say to know, technological progress measured in terms of productivity growth, producing what? You know, what's by what standard of value? For who? That there is, I mean, this this thing itself is an accelerating text because it is stuck on the positive feedback loop by which I mean it's, you know, it's getting high on its own supply. There's no reflection on the basic concepts here Because if you're a billionaire, you don't need to be reflective because no one has ever said no to you. And when they when they do, you just, you know, you just turn around because you're a billionaire. No one can stop you doing anything. And you write you write sort of stuff like this. And that I mean, may maybe this did go through a couple of edits. You can't really tell, but it is just a a pure refuge you know, just pure proliferation of of of this raw ideology here. You know, when when he says that, quote, you know, we believe technology is liberatory, liberatory of human potential, liberatory of the human soul, the human spirit, expanding what it can mean to be free, to be fulfilled, to be alive. We believe technology opens space of what it can mean to be human. I mean, the Landians were to fucking hate this. They don't like humans. You know, the humanity is kind of the problem. That's holding back. Because the the thing about cybernetics was it was it it was meant to show that machines could have self regulation, agency, intelligence without all of the meaty baggage of our slots. I mean, I mean, yeah. But I guess we can talk about what what parts you want to get, to get into, really. But one of the things I also wanna talk about is the way he talks about life in his act in his manifesto. Life is essentially taken to be energy. We say we says energy is life, but also life is taken to him to the markland reason to be essentially a standing reserve, human capital. And so the framing is already of a certain kind of technology, a certain kind of machinics, which is just left unquestioned. And there's no reason why he would question it because he, you know, he he he thinks he's God's well, God's gift to humanity. He's God's gift to technology. It's and he's got the money to prove it.
Yeah. I mean, yeah, it's, it's what I find with a lot of the writing of these VC types is how much everything around them, they retrofit into just like, into the startup playbook, like the way that the, that the tech VC backed startup is created and grows is also the exact same way that natural processes in humans and in nature also happen and grow. There's like this very kind of dumb, like retrofitting of trying to fit on top of fit everything into that model as like the, the framework, which you try to understand everything. I think one of the kind of like my favorites, one of my favorite quotes from this that I think really, summarizes a lot of like his, I guess, philosophy and ideas. It's this one where he says David Friedman points out that people only do things for other people for three reasons, love money or force love doesn't scale. So the economy can only run on money or force. The force experiment has been run and found wanting let's stick with money. That's like it. It's like so brazen and obvious like this, this could be like, you know, Mr. Scrooge writing this manifesto.
Yeah. It's, it's, it's very, I said high note signs apply. And when he says, you know, the at one point he says, Google the Aral Sea to talk about essentially that's that's to that's leftist of God now because, the Aral Sea was a giant environmental catastrophe put forth by the Soviet Union. Tell me it's it's telling your readers to Google something is not the sign of a good writer. But I don't think, anyone would tell them that because this guy probably pays quite good wages for those in his immediate orbit. I mean, I mean, in terms of accelerationism, though, I mean, there's that section of but after that abundance, when he says, we should place intelligence and energy in a positive feedback loop and drive them both to infinity. Now he thinks intelligence is a driver of progress because intelligence is kind of the marker of, humanity and also a marker of technology. This actually does take us something to a landian position, something like it because in that kind of CCR, you imagine sort of milieu, one of the things which I don't emphasize as much in my reading of accelerationism, but it's one strand of it, which does get to fill up later on, is this focus on the the question of intelligence, planetary intelligence. The the intelligence as something diffuse across all of our networks and all of, all of the literal surface of the earth, and the institutions that humans have made, and the institutions that make humans see what they are, you know, in terms of the reproducing the social and reproducing workers for the economy. And this does get taken up in a few ways. Land is it turns out actually for the philosophy of intelligence. You gotta go to someone like Reza Nagarastani, who is a sort of ex CCIU, wrote a book on intelligence and spirit and artificial general intelligence. But for Lan's, yeah, planetary intelligence is the the big thing. That's the thing that he eventually wants to accelerate beyond the human itself. You know, this is the the techno capital singularity, which is more human well, not more human. It's more than human, which is why to talk about a techno capital machine and make it work for humans makes, Andreessen and the effective accelerationist more more humane than the accelerationist, at least in that Landian vein. Mhmm.
Yeah. So, like, yeah, the kind of, I read the intense irony of this piece quoting Nick Land, to me seems to be just the fact that they are so, I mean, one, it's their optimism. Nick Land was not an optimistic. I wouldn't, I guess I wouldn't describe him as optimistic, and being, not, not really giving a shit about humans or like the human race as anything to be worth considering. Whereas Marc Andreessen frames everything in, like, this is all for the betterment of humanity and we're all gonna we need to make more humans and, like, Yeah. It's it's it's it's I mean, he explicitly talks about Nick Land in, techno capital machine where he says, we believe that techno capital machine is not anti human and is in fact the most pro human thing there is. So, I mean, I don't know if he necessarily reddened the clan and be like, I like everything but the human part, or he just didn't breed it. I don't know.
This is one of the key points in the clan's meltdown, which he's talked about markets learning to manufacture intelligence. And this was a big turn ins of economic policy, which is that markets are in a sense a, way of generating data and feedback to work out Mhmm. From the the standpoint of of governance what people want. And this is what the other gambit of this is why a sort of Clinton, Blair, They thought neoliberalism was a good idea for some extent because the market will tell you what people want, and then you can directly you can direct things to help people to get people what they want. You can also create desires, through the market. But and that that that's that sort of thing that that that Andreessen is tapping into there. He is totally divested of all of the human stuff, but the the vision of the human that he has is man as producer, but mostly man as commander of technology. And as Mark said, capital is command over unpaid labor. I mean, the the the enemies that he cites here are quite interesting. Because our enemies are not bad, people prefer bad ideas because Andreessen's an idealist ultimately. But he says, you know, anti merit, anti ambition, anti striving, anti achievement, anti greatness, Our enemy is statism, authoritarianism, collectivism, central planning, and socialism, vetocracy, bureaucracy, gerontocracy, you know, corruption, regulatory capture, monopolies, and cartels, which I'm like, well, then why did why do you keep asking the gov bail you out? Why does Sam Altman why has he been going around the planet begging every government to give his, you know, give a monopoly on open a on AI? Because otherwise, the the scary machine is going to kill us. It's it's a very weird almost schizoid affect you get for this text.
Like, why do you have an entire arm of your VC firm dedicated to getting government grants? Like, you're you feel like you were the ones like very clearly, explicitly, taking part in the very system that you, like, seem to be pointing at trying to criticize. But like, obviously, you're making probably making millions or billions of dollars off of, from the government. But, of course, a lot of these things are just simply unacknowledged for, and they I think a lot of these people just kind of rely on people not knowing about these things happening or like going on or making these connections in order to kind of appear as being very righteous and like important figures.
It it's probably worth as well saying that these are the first accelerationists, quote, unquote, to be at the top, you know, in the sense of there's various programs accelerating that are usually from below. I mean, you know, people in Warwick in the nineties and the CCIU weren't in control, but they had to develop new tactics of, actually culture culture hacking to try and spread their ideas and generate hype for, for essentially this this this time bomb part of capitalism. Marxists have to do this. You know, they have to do it from below. Mark Andreessen is the head of Andreessen Horowitz. Elon Musk is Elon Musk. And so they they their own negations are, you know, their own their own enemies, their own limits are themselves, but they have to displace that onto other people. And also the thing that keeps them rich is the same thing which they want to break through. This this negative feedback mechanism of the state apparently that's keeping us all so mediocre and tied down in anti technology. And it just ends up being, for them in their practice a well, a corporate fusion of the state and capital, which displaces its limits onto an imaginary enemy to be, well, he says it's just bad ideas, not bad people, but that's why the state deals with the bad people. He deals with the bad ideas. It's a unity of the state and corporations, which one can only think of in a particularly fascist mode. Probably less Hilary and probably a bit more Mussolini in terms of the corporates, but you can see you can see echoes of it here because I mean, how else are you going to politically implement this? But not politically, you're not meant to it better. Politically, you're meant to give these people like all of your money and boost their projects and sort of be like flag bearers for them. But we could, we see what happens with Musk when, when, when capital sort of starts running out. For example, when people stop wanting to advertise, advertise with, with Twitter, he suddenly starts throwing out every goddamn sort of conspiratorial theory, anti Semitic nonsense under the sun. And so we could also read this symptomatically as a dying self justification of people who thought they was at the forefront of human progress, got to the forefront and what were they left with, but, you know, AI generated porn.
Yeah. Yeah. What if the way that, you guys on your, on your podcast kind of described, or someone, I think someone else described, I believe it was Nick Landsberg as Delizzo Thatcherism, which I thought was incredibly funny. Nick Land is inspired and takes a lot from Delus, but he ends up being almost like advocating for a type of Thatcherism, a type of neoliberalism in in many ways. But when I read the techno optimist manifesto, kinda what you've alluded throughout is that there doesn't seem to be much delus in the techno optimist manifesto or anything like Marc Andreessen or any any anything that the effective accelerationists have really said so much so far, it seems to me. Like it seemed like they've gotten rid of the Lewis and like thinking about process and just kind of become extremely platonic, which was kind of antithetical to accelerationism and its, like, focus on time, because of its, like, interest in process rather than kind of, like, the state of things and like platonic ideals and representation.
Yeah. Well, we said the Deleuzianism in its kind of fundamental outlook is sort of zooming in to look at the processes that produce the various objects we encounter and experience. I mean, you know, looking for very similar to Marx. That's why it's so good to mix Marxism because, you think you're playing a game of politics for chessboard. Marx will tell you who made the pieces and how they got there. Very similar way to talk about object experience and objects of desire, Deleuze and Guattari will tell you what the process is to produce those objects as the kind of experiences that they are. And that would that would require a curiosity about production. Andreesen is interested primarily in productivity and productivity growth and metrics, which is sort of the outcome as opposed to anything going on. I mean, it's also a lot of these technologies are also just images that that that circulate and sell on that. You don't have to I mean, a lot of these startups have to actually produce the things they're they're offering you. They can sell the image, pay themselves a lovely wage for, you know, three or four years, maybe ten years if they're good at it, and then collapse and then go do something else. Like like, if we work, which Mhmm. Was landlordism, but the image was the thing making the money. I mean, Elon Musk doesn't need to get you to Mars. Easy to get you into invest in the idea that he might. And this is just a way to keep the money spinning infinitely by raising a quasi idea well, quasi religious to some extent, priesthood of it, which is what we saw with, I mean, Schmidt, Hooten Locker, and, Kissinger, the late, thankfully dead, Henry Kissinger, when they was boosting AI, that's this kind of new new godlike technology. It is it is a marketing campaign, ultimately. And, well, you can make Deleuze marketable. I mean, but it's it's not exactly going to be particularly sexy. I mean, even even with land. I think land was kind of a risk for Andreessen, but it it's also a, you know, a dog whistle to the other parts of the Silicon Valley. If that's the Silicon Valley right, but I don't know if there is a Silicon Valley left, I mean, that would be two, you know, two wings of the same bird, which is flying us into the sun, you know?
Yeah. Yeah. No. I don't it is I mean, it is funny that kind of, I don't know, the rights that describes as like Silicon Valley or Silicon Valley, San Francisco, I don't recall it like it being some overrun communist. I don't know, hellhole or something like that. There's like just so far from like any real understanding of what's happening in that, that place and the amount of like, I guess influence from very libertarian thinkers and, and, and policy makers there. But, kind of one of the things that I was wondering if you agreed with this or what you thought about this as kind of almost seeing this Marc Andreessen, manifesto and as well, maybe effective accelerationists, broadly is almost being a kind of radical Thatcherism or a radical neoliberalism where it is just simply the continue it is the continuing of perhaps that project of extreme capitalism and free market fundamentalism.
Oh, absolutely. I mean, we saw this in UK with our free forty day long prime minister of, Liz Truss, whose whole thing was let's, you know, let's cut all those axes. Let's take the brakes off. And then the bank of England said, what the fuck are you doing? Gone. You know? Thank you for killing the queen, but you've gotta go. It's it's it's it's it's it's an acceleration and intensification of fatterism, but only in the sense that these ideas, or selves are coming from within a certain economy, a certain political economy. And these think tank guys have had, you know, since freed since Milton Friedman, since the Chicago School have had carte blanche, infinite pools of money to tell various business people what they want to hear without exception for coming up to fifty years. Probably no longer than fifty years. And so there's no real pushback any of these theories gets to need to edit or modify themselves apart from push the pushback of fulfilling desire of the people consuming them. And it's it's kind of set in that death drive because there's nothing to even give them a molecule of pushing back. I mean, this is the this is why positive feedback can end up just devouring itself In hell, it's on the level of geopolitics, this is why fascism ends up devouring itself. Anyone that says no to it ends up getting shot. And they end up in this, you know, speed addled death drive in which they try to turn everything into an object of war on their side, and they end up destroying themselves. And so similar to fascism, hollowing out the state, hollowing out anything that keeps these, you know, materials together, including all the government money that, Musk needs for his carbon credits or all of the AI summits these people do. It is just a it's not just a project of of of of ideas, but a product of raw historical impunity, where essentially these, you know, basically a vulgar image. These people have been intellectually gooning for the past fifty fucking years and have, left its left the remains on our doorstep and said, oh, this is what we're going to do now. To which we want to to which, you know, we have to say, well, you've been doing this anyway for god knows how long. Look, you've already turned fascist as soon as the interest rates went up barely. Just Why are you still doing it? So yeah. Because because they they they want to be seen as cool. They're not cool anymore. It's the fake these that they're not seen as the innovator. You're not seeing it. Steve Jobs, it was a cultural figure. Mark Andreessen isn't. He wants to be Musk is a cultural figure, but he knows that he's not cool. People don't like him. He's kind of a bit of a joke. But from some very hardcore fans, probably he doesn't respect because he thinks they're nerds, because they probably are in this sort of very sort of bro like landscape. And this is just enough for attempt to make themselves seem far smarter, which you kind of wanna say, okay, if this is for the general public, given it's on your your actual website, you know, it's your manifesto, which is apparently apolitical, but it's a manifesto. You know, who Right. One, who is this for? Because he wants to be liked. And two, what the fuck? Why do you why do they give a shit what we think? You already you already run the world, but they want to be seen as cool because, ultimately, they are just as implicated in the machines as us. They have, you know, they are just as much the new flesh. They are addicted to the they're they're posting. I mean, for God's sake, Marc Andreessen's on Twitter. Forgot yeah. Why does Elon Musk care what these people he they have the money to command armies of resources, but they're not seen as cool because they aren't. And they think that that's the reason why humanity's going down the toilet because no one think no one is, giving them parades apart from people who they already don't respect because they think they're smarter than everyone else. And they're not in the sense. I mean, one, they because they believe in this verified category of intelligence, but that's kind of the the the landscape now. You know? It's like it's like the the machine from from, Harlan Ellison's I have no mouth and I must scream. And it literally says, you know, machine just masturbated and we had to take it or die. Unless if I say to throw these people off their high horses and hopefully bring them down to earth a little bit, you know, in case of Marc Andreessen, the kind of a Humpty Dumpty kind of maneuver.
Yeah. Yeah. Like, to me, I think it is very much like if we can call it, you know, this kind of movements, techno optimism, effective accelerationism as being a kind of radical neoliberalism or like making a almost, spiritual calling for neoliberalism and neoliberal like economic policy and, and what comes of it. Then in many ways, like this is also to get back to Art Fisher, like this is almost this is capitalist realism to an extreme and, like, to, an extreme deepening that perhaps they they would in the direction they would love to go to, of course, they don't see it as they don't use the term capitalist realism, whatever else. And they see capitalism as a very big positive and they have already accepted those terms. But yeah, it is something that I think, obviously, it's something that we have to, we have to push back on and we can't really just kind of like accept just because they are the ones using the cool technology. And maybe, you know, for listeners who are on who are very interested in, you know, developing on innovative technologies and in being on the cutting edge of these sort of things to be, like, careful with who kind of like who's writing they are, associating with and who they are believing and try to question the assumptions that they're making and try to think about the history of what a lot of the things that they often advocate for being actually quite old ideas just repackaged, you know, with a new new plastic wrapping over it. But, yeah, kind of what I want to do since we're we're coming up on the hour, I wanted to give you some time as well if you wanted to talk a bit about your book, Antioculus, which I believe I assume is a reference to Anti Oedipus from, from the list. It is.
I mean, first and foremost, if people want to look at where the, the Silicon Valley bros get technology wrong, because they see it terms of too much in terms of images, representations, you should actually go read Josh's book, Blockchain Radicals, because the introduction at least has a it just has a really fantastic way of breaking down this representational thinking. And it also a good introduction to slurs. Now if you also like cybernetics cyberpunk a kind of a a theory which engages with cyberpunk futurism but without any of the kind of accelerationist indulgence that technology is going to magically save us I mean, yeah, anti oculus, philosophy of escape is out now paperback and audio book. I mean, it does quite a lot, to be honest. I mean, it starts off with an illustration of the the material reality of the cyberpunk in fiction, particularly about health care regulation, cybernetic organs, and how that actually has does apply today in our particular kind of neoliberal landscape. Then it introduces cybernetics through, basically the science side effects through a very common image that of riot control and, kettling traffic policing sort of shows, introduces cybernetic concepts like feedback through riot control and also ways how to get around riot control, ways people developed out of it. Then in terms of further feedback mechanisms, control mechanisms, they're called, we give sort of an overview of various ways in which forms of identity can be policed and, delimit delimited in advance through, medical aspects. So we give essentially an accounts of the conditions of possibility for things like, race, racialism, racial control, transphobia, ableism, stuff like that. And then towards the rest of the book, we talk about ways of further getting out of it, finding limits, bringing theories of control up to their limits and then pushing past them. Through various theories of of of an archaic star drawn from likes of Foucault, Haitian revolution, various ways in which control affects the the capitalist realist aspect of our imaginations. So we use a lot of psychology in the later chapters, particularly the works of Deleuze, James Hillman, Gaston Bachelard, and it really just tries to take you through all the ways which controls operating today and absolutely to the limits of them. Because what what escapes control? What escapes capture? Because when you get to the lip because ultimately these machines are political. They can be defeated. They can be destroyed. They can be reappropriated for better ends. And, on that note, I'll I'll I'll I'll stop the plug. Oh, actually, one final plug. Sorry. Coming up in mid time this year, a new addition of Mark Fisher's PhD thesis, which he did with the CCRU, flatline constructs, cybernetic, sorry, gothic materialism and cybernetic theory fiction. I've written a forward to that introducing, accelerationism and the CCRU and its basic sort of temporal theories there. And, there'll be other book next to that called the new flesh, which is about what social media is doing, just what the data economy is doing to us, and how we change our relationships around behavior online, and how that also feeds into geopolitical struggles, like, who trains AI, who trains datasets, who trains people, things like drones. And so, a lot of cyber theory this year, but I'll I'll I'll leave it at that.
Nice. Sounds like a lot of things coming up for you. That's great. I was interested that, I think the Antiochus kinda like this frame of pushing past systems of control. Like, that sounds I mean, that sounds a lot like how you were describing accelerationism, in the beginning. If we can also see capitalism as a system of, of control and needing to break past that specific system of control, maybe that's more akin to a left accelerationism.
Or was meant to be. There are there's a bit of accelerationism in there. There's a little bit of cheeky redefinition in one of the chapters, but it it is it is ultimately a manual, a toolbox to do to do to do a style wilt with it. Just say here here's the ways things are being controlled. Here's the limits of them. We try to do control theory in a very sort of technical sense. But also very accessible. We're not doing control theory in sense that there's, there's controllers out there. No. It's all impersonal governments, habits, capitalism itself, and machinics, and the technology set off.
Sure. Yeah. Well, cool. Great. I will have, all the links. I have links to the anti oculus if you want to check out the book and everything else in the show notes. And, yeah, is there any maybe, where can people keep up with, you and your work as a final goodbye?
Absolutely. You can, catch up with me mostly on Twitter at sanctmax t c I or just follow the asset horizon accounts, and that's where most of our stuff goes up. We've got reading groups over asset horizon on the Tide, Dolores, Foucault, and of course our regular podcasts out sometimes also with, zero books and repeat media. So then that's about it. And I'd better say thank you so much for having me on.
Thank you. Maybe just, the last thing I'll mention that I probably have keep forgetting to mention is that the audio book for Blockchain Radicals is also coming out in February. So by the time this episode comes out, it might actually already be out. February 6 of the day comes out. And as well, I'm planning a book club for blockchain radicals if you are, if you need the social pressure to finally read read the book that everyone is talking about. But also make sure you check out Antioculus. Thank you, Adam. And, yeah, we'll stay in we'll stay in touch, I'm sure, at Avian. In the future, there will be more accelerationisms that'll be popping up, probably next year that we can talk about.