“Memetic-Current: Blockchain and Memes”
A cybernetic analysis of Pop-culture in Techonomic-Time.
If you’ve been keeping up with my blog posts on Medium or with some of my posts on Twitter you might have noticed a recurring theme. Accelerationism is one of the current theoretical frameworks I find myself completely entrenched in. Part of the reason I find it so compelling is because of its utility when analyzing time-intensity under capitalism. What exactly this means, is best understood if quoted directly from the go-to “Accelerationist” text.
“[[ ]] The story goes like this: Earth is captured by a technocapital singularity as renaissance rationalization and oceanic navigation lock into commoditization take-off. Logistically accelerating techno-economic interactivity crumbles social order in auto-sophisticating machine runaway. As markets learn to manufacture intelligence, politics modernizes, upgrades paranoia, and tries to get a grip. -Nick Land, Meltdown (1994)
This might be the single most “memed” text out of any of the “accelerationist canon”. There are a lot of reasons why this short paragraph is important. To start, it immediately touches upon many of the accelerationist motifs, such as technology/capitalism, deterritorialization, A.I, politics of paranoia, etc. This all is condensed into a simple paragraph in such stylistically refined writing that it is hard to ignore how important a text like “Meltdown” really is.
“Converging upon terrestrial meltdown singularity, phase-out culture accelerates through its digitech-heated adaptive landscape, passing through compression thresholds normed to an intensive logistic curve: 1500, 1756, 1884, 1948, 1980, 1996, 2004, 2008, 2010, 2011 …
Nothing human makes it out of the near-future.”
-Nick Land, Meltdown (1994)
The most important question when talking about Accelerationism is, what exactly is accelerating? Is time accelerating, is culture accelerating? how do we accelerate? These are all questions I’m suddenly put to task in answering when writing about accelerationism.
I will be addressing these questions as I answer or attempt to formulate a theory of cybernetic culture in techonomic-time. The best way to describe techonomic time is as the time-structure of capital accumulation. In the most reductive sense, the higher the capital accumulation/technological innovation, the larger the order of magnitude to quantitatively account for this rate of change is necessary: Time.
§00. ‘Acceleration’ as it is used here describes the time-structure of capital accumulation. It thus references the ‘roundaboutness’ founding Bohm-Bawerk’s model of capitalization, in which saving and technicity are integrated within a single social process-diversion of resources from immediate consumption into the enhancement of productive apparatus. Consequently, as basic co-components of capital, technology and economics have only a limited, formal distinctiveness under historical conditions of ignited capital escalation. The indissolubly twin-dynamic is techonomic (cross-excited commercial industrialism). Acceleration is techonomic time. -Nick Land, Teleoplexy (2014)
The reason why these two texts I have cited are of utmost importance in this project is that they describe the general pattern of acceleration. The intensification of time is being quantitatively explored but its qualitative theorization is still underdeveloped. Many new writers like Meta-Nomad with (Z/acc) and Xenogothic with (U/acc) seem to be exploring these ideas, but there is more work to be done to really push accelerationist thought to new potentials.
In this informal introduction, I won’t go into the details of each section but I will generally lay them down as I currently see them. My main task is to show how capital accumulation leads to an intensification of time or “acceleration” which directly impacts memetic proliferation and leads to “semiotic compression”. Semiotic compression can be described as the process of a set of signs being so self-referential that they develop a new meaning outside of their individual constituents. Key Figures that I will be analyzing who are clear examples of doing this are figures like Jreg, Justin Murphy, and Q from The Book Club.
If capital accumulation has a direct impact on technological development this necessarily has an impact not just on time but on communicative technologies, and as a result, directly impacts information proliferation. This leads to a proliferation of signals and messages and fragmented world views all competing for the same thing, the centralization of power. Echo-chambers, forking-reality, Fake News, becoming imperceptible, these are all part of the same process.
This is “Memetic-Current: Blockchain and Memes”, A cybernetic analysis of Pop-culture in techonomic time.
-To be continued
