Professor Ben Noys: What Crypto Sees in Accelerationism

This post is part of CoinDesk’s 2019 Year in Review, a collection of 100 op-eds, interviews and takes on the state of blockchain and the world. Benjamin Noys, a professor at the University of Chichester, in the UK, invented the term “accelerationism” for a philosophy that says technological progress should be greatly sped up.

In his book Malign Velocities: Accelerationism and Capitalism (Zero Books, 2014), Benjamin Noys defines accelerationism as the idea that capitalism should be pushed to ever dizzying speeds to bring about a new future. Markets, technological progress and intelligence are all attributes of the same engine of history, which sometimes proceeds at the expense of humanity. Adherents argue the process of disrupting traditions, uprooting ecosystems and alienating individuals cannot be stopped. The only response is to accelerate.

Five years on, Noys is now looking to uncover the links between this fringe philosophy, which exists mostly online, and the emergence of…