Deceleration resistance repeatedly fails and may now be abandoned entirely

Evidence

There may even be a change looming in the way the acceleration dynamic is dealt with, one whose cause could be precisely the repeated experience of the futility of resistance. It is expressed in the way the Techno Generation distinguishes itself from its predecessors, especially among the youth movements. Previous movements like the ‘68ers, hippies, greens, new age groups, etc., were shaped by, among other things, resistance to the compulsions to accelerate (of society and machines). At least in this respect they have on the whole failed. Today’s Techno Generation has perhaps drawn from this the lesson that resistance should be given up: similar to the (disappearingly small group of) futurists in their own day, its representatives set themselves up at the forefront of the acceleration process, using all time-saving devices and the fastest media and technologies to regain their temporal and technical sovereignty and impose their will on the machines instead of pulverizing themselves in a senseless revolt against them. — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration, 294

Categorization

• SEED: Article angle: the Techno Generation’s adoption of acceleration as the successor to decades of failed slowdown protest, and what mastery-as-compliance costs.
• XREF: Connects to youth-culture historiography and to critique of modernity-as-project themes in Rosa’s own later chapters.