ACCELERATE EVERYTHING

A book in progress

Accelerate Everything is a book about why we have lost the ability to build, and what that has to do with the way we see.

Modern institutions are excellent at counting what is already legible. They are much worse at noticing the particular thing before them. Meanwhile, the culture has learned to treat pessimism as a sign of seriousness. Say everything is doomed and nobody asks for evidence. Suggest that human beings can still make something new and suddenly you are the naive one.

The book argues that these are the same failure of attention. Bureaucracy flattens the particular into a category. Catastrophe talk does the same. Both make it harder to see what people are actually building, what improves, and what remains possible.

Optimism here is not cheerfulness. It is the disciplined belief that action matters, joined to the obligation to look carefully.

THE CURRENT SHAPE OF THE BOOK

Introduction: Two Ledgers

PART ONE: THE PUZZLE

1. Forty Thousand Items

2. A Map of Rising Prices

PART TWO: THE BLINDNESS

3. The Planner's Blindness

4. 360,000 Pages

5. Delirious

6. Nobody Is Driving

Interlude: The Ledger and the Graveyard

PART THREE: THE RACKET

7. The Free Option

8. Calibrated and Uncalibrated Gloom

9. Manifesto

10. The Underground Man

PART FOUR: THE FACULTY

11. The Street Finds Its Own Uses

12. Theology in a Hoodie

13. Uncaptured Surplus

Coda: Discipline

The present target is about 130,000 words. This is a plan, which means it will survive until the manuscript objects.

WHY A BLOG

These essays were written between 2017 and 2026 and are being published while the book is still being made. Some are foundations, some are receipts, and some are wrong turns. When the book is assembled, a great deal will be cut. Authors call this editing. Readers may call it relief.

Too many words, but here it is.

Read the essays at madsbjerg.com/blog