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<a
href="http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/debate-is-idiot-distraction-accelerationism-and-the-politics-of-the-internet/">http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/debate-is-idiot-distraction-accelerationism-and-the-politics-of-the-internet/</a><br>
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<h2 style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;
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background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“debate is idiot
distraction”: accelerationism and the politics of the internet</h2>
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<p style="font-size: 1.2em; line-height: 1.3em;">By Eugene
Brennan.</p>
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<p style="font-size: 1.2em; line-height: 1.3em; color: rgb(51, 51,
51); font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-style:
normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing:
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background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Robert McChesney,<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em><a
href="http://thenewpress.com/index.php?option=com_title&task=view_title&metaproductid=1878"
style="color: rgb(34, 34, 34); text-decoration: none;
font-weight: bold;">Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism is
Turning the Internet Against Democracy</a></em>, The New
Press, 2013</p>
<p style="font-size: 1.2em; line-height: 1.3em; color: rgb(51, 51,
51); font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-style:
normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing:
normal; orphans: auto; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px;
text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto;
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background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The myths of libertarian
competition and innovation espoused by defenders of neo-liberalism
are the same myths which ‘celebrants’ of the internet have fallen
prey to. In the nineties these ‘celebrants’ outweighed those
Robert McChesney refers to as ‘skeptics’. Theoretical and
journalistic writing, intoxicated by the advances of the net, was
by no means limited to the starry-eyed optimism of the likes of<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em>Wired<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></em>magazine in
California. The Internet and new technological changes were also a
source of fascination from the very different perspective of the
nihilistic libidinal economy of the Cybernetic Culture Research
Unit (CCRU) at Warwick University. Sickened by the moralising
tendencies of a Left content with identity politics, their
controversial leader Nick Land searched for a theoretical praxis
based on a negation of identity, a post-human ‘machinic praxis’.
This led him to embrace the de-subjectiying qualities of
neo-liberalism, envisioning capitalist speed as a generator of
post-human technological revolution. The CCRU’s fusion of
disparate elements included texts by Deleuze and Guattari ,
cyberpunk and science fiction references, films such as Blade
Runner and Apocalypse Now, and jungle and rave music. The texts
are saturated with a discourse on immersion and imminence, always
oriented towards an experience of the Outside and a celebration of
post-human possibilities. If for Land and the CCRU, imminent
human extinction was accessible on the dance floor, network theory
and the development of the internet also pointed to exhilarating
trajectories towards the Outside.<br>
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