The Concept of Acceleration (Session 6)

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Self-transcribed from the recording's audio/video with Whisper ASR, then drawn from the frozen curation of the CCRU oral archive. The identifiers below fingerprint the exact source transcript files.

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Adjudicated APPROVED 2026-07-11 (basis: owner ruling 2026-07-11: institutional recordings released except fee-charging course content; lane recent-institutional -> recent-institutional-released). Series: standalone. Source: audio original (.mp3).

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These jump targets come from timestamps preserved in the source transcript, so they work as navigational anchors rather than editorially invented section labels. Timings are approximate — they mark where a passage begins, not exact word timing.

• 00:00:00

  Hello and welcome to the sixth session of the concept of acceleration with McLean. I'm going to pass the mic to him right now. Thanks Theodore. So just in terms of where we are, this is our second stagnationism week and then we, assuming that we're allowed to continue, then we move on to a couple of weeks on upswing…

• 00:17:55

  One of his most interesting readings is of Marx, where he says that the machine that Marx is basically describing is recognizably a large-scale social thermodynamic machine. And Marx's prediction, this system would almost literally run out of steam, can be conceived within these terms. Especially it can be conceived…

• 00:36:29

  been saying throughout this thing with another version in nature in which in which the fundamental model that one's looking at the largest scale of the modernistic process is a exponential super exponential trend to some threshold of absolute criticality you know de los go Tyree schizophrenia technological singularity…

• 00:52:22

  You know that's the that's the position that you're. Diagnosing isn't there but like you say there is there's then in another part of the dimensionality of the system is the career. Kind of I guess. It. Is a. Ecological. Type of people. Who's who really don't think that. You think that the very fixation. Upon some…

• 01:13:12

  resources and it's it's not it doesn't have the luxury of saying oh well this is such a massively interesting philosophical conundrum of intensive quantities and you know we just will just put all our investment decisions on hold because clearly we can't you know to a sufficient level of conceptual adequacy make…

• 01:35:52

  that you know technological process progress rather is just a it's just a kind of weird narrative ization of this basically basic energetic consumption process and that on the far side of the hill as we start going down the slope we just go go into this kind of negative this negative time period in which technology…

• 01:56:59

  But there's a utopian social tradition, which is, you know, if you put God's dimensions into dimensions like God's dimensions like God's dimensions like God's dimensions like God's dimensions like God's dimensions like God's dimensions if we're going to put it in an overtly theological framework. I don't think…

• 02:14:17

  Amy, I know you're right. Okay, bye. Thank you. That was interesting. Bye. Bye Nick. Bye.