#0012 What Is Accelerationism?, My Brain Finally Broke, Liquid Content & Dolphins

Welcome to Constant Flux, a weekly lens taking a systemic view on the polycrisis.

This week we dive into my escalating sense that everything is quietly collapsing, a media landscape liquefied by AI, and accelerationism’s uneasy promise of momentum in a stuck world.

Speed now illuminates reality whereas light once gave objects of the world their shape ― Paul Virilio, The Administration of Fear

What is Accelerationism? A Primer on the Defining Philosophy of Our Time

This is a great primer on accelerationism. It maps the terrain really well, from Nick Land’s "ecstatic" collapse, to Fisher’s mournful longing for lost futures, and on to e/acc’s solarpunky confidence in speed as salvation.

My take on accelerationism is that it is attractive because it feels like motion in a time of paralysis. It promises momentum when politics and culture feel stuck.

Personally I believe in bursts of transformation, but not in constant escalation. Acceleration as an end in itself is just drift. Change should have rhythm, not just velocity. And history has rhythm right? There should be moments to breathe, absorb, and recalibrate. Sprints and retrospectives. Sorry for the lazy metaphor... 

I don't think we need more acceleration. What we need are new situations. That requires more imagination, not just more invention. Not just new tools, but new ways of thinking.

If I could ask accelerationists one question, it would be simple: when are we done?

My Brain Finally Broke

Yesterday morning started with a Kafkaesque situation where I got lost in referrals, circular calls, no one taking responsibility. A small thing sure, but for the first time in a long while it left me with the suffocating sensation: that everything was quietly collapsing. It's impenetrable systems and unaccountability sinks all the way down.

Then I read My Brain Finally Broke and....

.... it just magnified the feeling.

In the article the writer tells us that she has started to confuse words, like reading "hot yoga" as "hot dogs" or mistaking "Jan. Ticketing" for her own name. At one point, she spaces out so completely while texting that she forgets how to form coherent words. Like the world just doesn’t make sense anymore.

Mental health crisis,

a time crisis,

a media crisis,

a systems crisis, and

a crisis of language and attention all at once.

The polycrisis is real it's exhausts you and leaves you unsettled.

If reality feels unstable, maybe it’s because it is... 

The Dawn of Liquid Content

This piece is a good read on how generative AI is reshaping what we mean by content. It describes a shift from static media to something more fluid. Content that adapts to context, audience, and moment in real time. It’s not just published and done. It evolves, responds, and reshapes itself as it moves.

"Content becomes less like a product and more like a process—alive, responsive, and distributed."

I mean, this is not really new, it's just a continuation of media evolution. Charles Dickens famously published many of his novels as serials in newspapers and magazines, with chapters released week by week. An early form of modular storytelling.

Still, it makes you wonder, what kinds of creative possibilities open up when content becomes more and more fluid?

Ripples

Creating Agents that Co-Create
A talk that emphasizes the potential of AI agents to enhance human creativity through collaborative design and complex reasoning in future applications. Maybe?

How Stanford Teaches AI-Powered Creativity
A guy at Stanford show us how they help non-technical minds use AI less like a tool and more like a creative partner.

DolphinGemma: How Google AI is helping decode dolphin communication
Google is training AI to listen in on dolphins, trying to make sense of their clicks and whistles and move toward real conversation. Pretty cool.