If you have spent any time reading about the future lately, you have probably collected a small pile of overlapping words: Abundance, progress studies, solarpunk, techno-optimism, effective accelerationism. They all seem vaguely allied. They also seem to argue with each other. And it is genuinely hard to tell whether these are five names for one thing, five rival camps, or something messier in between.
This post is a map, not a recruitment pitch. The goal is to help you place each strand — what it emphasizes, who is associated with it, what it actually claims — so you can borrow the useful parts without feeling like you just signed a membership card. Think "you are here," not "pick a side."
Why there are so many overlapping labels
Most of these terms grew up in the last decade or so, in loosely connected corners of the internet, academia, and tech. They share a rough starting instinct: that human progress is real, that stagnation is a choice, and that the future is worth building on purpose rather than drifting into. But they disagree — sometimes sharply — on method, aesthetics, politics, and how much to worry about risk.
That is why the labels feel both similar and quarrelsome. They are answers to slightly different questions. Progress studies asks "why did progress slow, and how do we restart it?" The Abundance agenda asks "why can't we build enough of the things we already know how to build?" Solarpunk asks "what should a good future feel like?" Techno-optimism asks "should we be excited about technology at all?"
None of them has "won," and treating any one as the settled truth is a good way to get things wrong. Our own take — that optimism should be grounded, with risk kept in frame — is itself just one position in this landscape, not the referee's whistle.
Progress studies: the research-and-history strand
Progress studies is the most academic corner. The name comes from a July 2019 essay by economist Tyler Cowen and Stripe co-founder Patrick Collison, "We Need a New Science of Progress" in The Atlantic, which argued that we study the effects of progress far more than its causes. The strand asks empirical, historical questions: Why did scientific and economic growth speed up in some eras and places and not others? Has research productivity been declining, and if so, why?
You will see names like Cowen, Collison, and writers such as Jason Crawford (who founded the Roots of Progress Institute) associated with it. The mood is curious and evidence-driven rather than utopian. It is less "the future will be amazing" and more "let's figure out what actually made things better before, so we can do more of it."
The honest caveat: progress studies is a young field, and critics argue it can underweight the costs and losers of past progress. Taking it seriously means holding both the gains and the harms in view.
The Abundance agenda: build more of the good stuff
The Abundance agenda is the most policy-focused strand, and lately the most visible. Its core complaint is concrete: in many wealthy countries we have grown bad at building the physical things people need — housing, clean energy, transit, infrastructure — not because we lack the technology, but because of process, regulation, and institutional sclerosis.
The 2025 book Abundance by journalists Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson (published by Avid Reader Press in March 2025) brought the term to a wider audience, and it overlaps with the "supply-side progressivism" and pro-housing (YIMBY) conversations. The emphasis is less on inventing new gadgets and more on removing the bottlenecks that stop us from deploying what we already have.
The internal tension here is political. Abundance draws people from across the spectrum, and they disagree about which rules are the real bottleneck and which protections are worth keeping. Some worry that "build more, faster" can be used to wave away legitimate environmental or community concerns. A fair reading treats those trade-offs as real questions, not obstacles to steamroll.
Solarpunk and protopia: the aesthetic and values strand
Solarpunk is the strand that answers a different question: not "how do we grow?" but "what should a good future look and feel like?" It is an art, design, and fiction movement picturing futures that are green, decentralized, and humane — solar panels and gardens woven through cities, technology in service of ecology rather than against it. It grew largely out of online creative communities in the 2010s rather than from any single founding text.
Closely related is the idea of protopia, a term coined by writer Kevin Kelly: not a perfect utopia and not a collapsing dystopia, but a world that gets a little better each year through steady, unglamorous improvement. If you want the longer version, we wrote a whole piece on protopia vs. utopia vs. dystopia, and one on solarpunk for people who build things — because the aesthetic only matters if it eventually turns into shipped, real-world projects.
The caveat here is the mirror image of Abundance's. Solarpunk is strong on values and vision and can be light on the hard engineering, economics, and messy politics of actually getting there. Its best practitioners know this and treat the imagery as a brief for builders, not a substitute for building.
Techno-optimism, and where e/acc sits
Techno-optimism is the broadest umbrella term: the general stance that technology, applied thoughtfully, has been and can keep being a major force for human flourishing. It is less a specific program than a disposition. Most of the strands above are, in this sense, flavors of techno-optimism with different specialties.
Within that umbrella sits effective accelerationism, usually written "e/acc." It is worth naming clearly because newcomers often meet it first and assume it is the movement's headquarters. It is not. e/acc is one loud, contested online position that argues for accelerating technological development as fast as possible, often framed in explicit opposition to AI-safety and "decelerationist" thinking. It comes with a lot of combative culture-war baggage.
We would gently steer you away from treating it as the flagship or as an identity to adopt. The useful parts of the techno-optimist impulse — build things, don't surrender to fatalism — do not require the bravado or the risk-dismissal. If you want the careful version of that argument, we unpacked effective accelerationism, minus the culture war, specifically as critique and context rather than as a banner. Grounded optimism keeps risk in the frame; that is exactly the part e/acc's loudest voices tend to drop.
How the strands overlap — and how to engage without joining a tribe
Here is a rough map. It is a simplification, and reasonable people would draw the lines differently, but it should help you orient.
| Strand | Core question | Emphasis | Often associated with | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Progress studies | Why did progress slow, and how do we restart it? | History, economics, evidence | Cowen, Collison, Crawford | Can underweight progress's costs |
| Abundance agenda | Why can't we build enough? | Policy, housing, energy, deployment | Klein, Thompson, YIMBY | Trade-offs waved away as "bottlenecks" |
| Solarpunk / protopia | What should a good future feel like? | Aesthetics, ecology, values, fiction | Kevin Kelly (protopia) | Vision without engineering |
| Techno-optimism | Should we be excited about technology? | General disposition | Broad umbrella | Slides into hype if unhedged |
| e/acc (a subset) | Should we accelerate at all costs? | Speed, anti-"decel" framing | Online tech circles | Risk-dismissal, culture war |
The big overlaps are easy to see once they are laid out. Progress studies supplies the evidence; the Abundance agenda turns it into policy; solarpunk gives it a face people can want; techno-optimism is the shared mood underneath. The tensions are just as real: how much to weigh speed against caution, vision against feasibility, and whose costs get counted.
So how do you engage without enlisting? A few habits help:
- Take ideas, not identities. You can find the Abundance housing argument persuasive without adopting anyone's politics wholesale, and love solarpunk imagery without dismissing hard trade-offs.
- Follow the claim to its evidence. When a strand asserts something, ask what would show it to be wrong. The strands that welcome that question are the ones worth your time.
- Keep the risks in the room. Any version of optimism that needs you to ignore downsides is selling something. Grounded optimism keeps the excitement and the caution together.
- Notice the disagreements. This is a landscape, not a church. The internal arguments are a feature; they are where the honest thinking happens.
In Plain English
What this is: a field guide to the main strands of pro-progress thinking — progress studies, the Abundance agenda, solarpunk and protopia, and techno-optimism (with e/acc as one contested subset) — and how they relate.
Who it helps: anyone who keeps bumping into these overlapping terms and can't tell whether they are allies, rivals, or the same thing wearing different hats.
When to use it: when you want to read further and need a mental map first, so you can tell where a given writer, book, or argument sits.
What to do next: pick the one question that matters most to you — restarting progress, building enough, imagining a good future, or staying excited without going numb to risk — and read into that strand first. You do not have to choose a team to get value from the map.
Start here
If this is your first stop, Start Here walks you into Uptism from the top, and The Case for Optimism collects the pieces that argue the pro-progress position honestly. Keep the Abundance agenda, explained for non-wonks open in a tab for the terms above, and read our companion on what we mean by grounded optimism to see where we stand — as one position on this map, not the last word on it.
You now have the map. The next move is small: pick a single strand, read one primary source, and see whether it survives your own questions. That is the whole method.