Tech’s elite figures frequently jump on board with life’s extremes, embracing them with as much passion as they have their future business plans. That includes the physical, from fasting 20 hours a day and replacing food with liquid supplements, to the more speculative, such as population collapse, and planning for potential global disasters with bunkers and space travel.
The latest obscure philosophy seems to be “effective accelerationism”, which has begun popping up in user profiles on the platform formerly known as Twitter. Among its proponents appear to be tech investor Marc Andreessen and Y Combinator co-founder Garry Tan who have signalled their support by adding the “e/acc” tag to their profiles on X.
But what does it actually mean? There are many different explanations about the philosophy, some touching on laws of thermodynamics, others focusing on generative artificial intelligence. But the basic theory behind effective accelerationism is that the rapid development of technology will bring about real changes to society, whether that is in sustainability, social development or economic changes.
It has lofty goals, planning to create a better future. On the face of it, that seems like a positive thing. But given that the tech industry has shown a serious inability in the past to regulate its actions and see beyond its own immediate needs to the unintended consequences, people would be wise to be wary.
While the tech elite are pushing the future of technology at all costs, they should remember that pursuit of innovation has left consequences of “seemed like a good idea” at the time in its wake. The notion of a “better future” varies. What counts as a utopia for a tech billionaire may not be so for the average worker who finds themselves out of a job as AI takes over. Or minorities who find that an inability to recognise systemic bias has exacerbated existing inequalities.
