A broad philosophical and strategic stance holding that the forces of technological, economic, or social change should be intensified rather than restrained, based on the belief that speeding up existing systems will either produce breakthroughs that solve structural problems or hasten the collapse of outdated institutions, clearing the way for something new. In tech contexts, accelerationism often frames rapid automation, AI development, and market disruption as historically inevitable and therefore preferable to resistance, arguing that progress emerges from velocity and scale rather than caution. Critics see it as reckless or destabilizing, while supporters view it as pragmatic realism about innovation’s momentum.
In contemporary Silicon Valley culture, accelerationist thinking appears in explicitly techno-optimist arguments that more technology is the answer to the harms caused by technology, a position articulated in manifestos such as the one published by Marc Andreessen, which advocates aggressively building and deploying new tools, startups, and AI systems as a moral good. Under this framing, regulation and precaution are treated as stagnation, while acceleration is cast as liberation, trusting that abundance, growth, and invention will outpace the social risks they create.