2
Preface
Finally the messages penetrate
There is a corpse of an image—they penetrate
The corpse of a radio. Cocteau used a car radio on account of NO SPEED LIMIT. In any case the messages penetrate the radio and render it (and the radio) ultimately useless.
—Jack Spicer
This short book contains three essays on accelerationism, a concept that has been much in vogue recently. The term was first coined disparagingly in 2010 by Benjamin Noys. It has been repurposed as a positive term, most notably by Alex Williams and Nick Srnicek, in 2013, in their Manifesto for an Accelerationist Politics. Noys summarizes his objections to accelerationism in a recent book. Williams and Srnicek have a book forthcoming that expands upon their manifesto. The present volume occupies a kind of middle ground, in between Williams and Srnicek’s advocacy and Noys’s denunciation. I wish especially to consider the aesthetic possibilities of accelerationism.