When I worked in brand marketing, I came to adopt the moniker “accelerationist of delight”. This foremost invoked accelerationism — this notion that, in order to ultimately improve institutions for the better, the commercial realm must celebrated and incentivized to grow as quickly and disruptively as possible, unceasingly expanding even at the short-term expense of public wellbeing.
Delight, on the other hand, is a term used in creative settings the world over, oftentimes aimed at facilitating this very same type of commercial growth.
Like “endearment”, delight is a term of brand aspiration — one that every marketing executive, product strategist, or design thinking workshop director invariably invokes when considering how they want their brand experience to be received.
I believe that delight should be reverentially pursued, as effectively as possible, with a mindfulness toward sustaining our present state of acceleration for all participants — rather than just those who have already reaped its benefits.
It’s a focus on helping businesses succeed (particularly among cohorts who haven’t reaped the same benefits of acceleration); improving products for under-recognized users (those that too-often go under-delighted); and achieving long-term value (by driving sustainable growth, alchemically harnessing an accelerationist mindset).
Instead of eschewing the stability of existing institutions, this sort of acceleration entails a deeper appreciation for them, and a reverence of one institution that’s more nebulous, under-recognized, but indeed fundamental — that of technological progress (as opposed to simply disruption).
Lacking reverence, what looks like technological progress is more often merely disruption — no delight.
It’s this imbalance that delight accelerationism seeks to address. It’s about maintaining a reverence for technology and a mindfulness of the perspectival transfigurements afforded by the Anthropocene.
Big talk, I know. More soon.