There’s a lot to love about more mindful and resilient and ecological use of computing, but I wish they would build a consensus around that instead of bolting on extra politics. It’s a symptom of polarization… you can’t have independent causes, they have to align to a bunch of other causes too, each one taking a slice off your support base until you’re left with the tiny, powerless intersection that already agrees with you. It’s the self-torpedoing recipe that makes the omnicause so impotent.
stackghost 56 minutes ago [-]
Consider that the venn diagram of "people likely to be negatively impacted by climate change" and "people who belong to historically marginized or discriminated groups" has a lot of overlap. It's little wonder to me why permacomputing, having its roots in environmentalism, attracts people who spend a lot of time and energy on social justice causes.
But still: It's okay to enjoy the mindful and resilient and ecological aspects and not enjoy some other aspect.
tolerance 23 minutes ago [-]
I think the issue being highlighted here is how polarizing causes are advanced and detract from a reasonable one that is supposed to be the pith of an organization.
> It's okay to enjoy the mindful and resilient and ecological aspects and not enjoy some other aspect.
I don't object to this in the most general sense. But I also think that a little tact can go a long way from the organization's side to anticipate where the public can't exercise it on their own.
jl6 14 minutes ago [-]
Taking some parts and leaving others is exactly how intersectionalism should work: at an individual level. You throw your lot in with the orgs and movements you like, and leave or oppose the ones you don’t. The intersection is within you.
Unfortunately the fashion is now for orgs and movements to declare their own intersections, which does nothing to further the core issues, while actively repelling those outside the intersection (which, by the time you’ve intersected a bunch of different things, is nearly everyone).
There is nothing inherently “post-Marxist” or “decolonial” about the core ideas here (scare quotes because these are extra-unhelpfully underdefined terms). Framing the project this way just signals that non-post-Marxists (etc.) will not be welcome, which makes it quite hard to enjoy the good bits for people who have been pre-declared to be the enemy.
Successful orgs are laser-focused on their core purpose.
zozbot234 23 minutes ago [-]
There's strong first-principles reasons to think that left-wing radical politics does a significant disservice to historically marginalized or discriminated groups. Historically the proper and most effective response to maginalization and discrimination was developing strong, enduring social ties (arguably, these social ties are what defines a "group" to begin with, especially on very long-run, even generational timescales), which in practice is now coded as a "right wing" value.
knuppar 47 minutes ago [-]
This sounds like a fence sitter take. Everything is political and not acknowledging that is part of the problem.
HerbManic 1 hours ago [-]
I have argued for a long time that Permacomputing will be seen as the missing part of the Free Software movement. What use is free software long term if you do not have hardware you can control, maintain and repair easily? This will mean a sacrifice in performance and functionality but gaining control and longevity.
With things like Secureboot, TPM modules and ever increasing demands to lock down systems, there is the risk that even libre software will be snuffed out. While not those technologies explicitly, similar less friendly things may come up in future. And when that happens, being beholden to billion dollar hardware companies won't seem so friendly. A little alarmist, but I didn't think we would be were we are today as it is.
One interesting area is about how to make software that is not hardware locked but easy enough to implement with very little work involved.
A system spec that is only 32 instructions deep, something that a single person could implement in less than a week. Essentially the hardest part is building the hardware Abstraction Layer. It wouldn't be efficient but it is very portable and thus makes it resilient to any future possible shocks.
pfortuny 45 minutes ago [-]
This project appears here from time to time and each and every time I am amazed. Thanks for sharing it.
louismerlin 3 hours ago [-]
I have been involved in Berlin’s permacomputing scene for a few years now, and have met a lot of very cool people through that. Can highly recommend you get involved in your local meetups or start your own !
I think an important step is to acknowledge when and where to implement technology in the first place.
Arguably the environmental benefit of an American farm replacing a 10 year old tractor with an electric model isn't nearly as good for the environment as a farm in India replacing a 70 year old tractor that leaks gallons of oil per month with a 50 year old tractor that doesn't.
Capitalists don't understand how to apply cost-to-benefit ratios to anything outside themselves. There is no global entity making sure resources are spent responsibly or equitably at scale.
shota_x402 40 minutes ago [-]
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shota_x402 1 hours ago [-]
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aaron695 4 hours ago [-]
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lynx97 2 hours ago [-]
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jochem9 2 hours ago [-]
One does not rule out the other. In the end it's nerds messing with hardware.
Lots of computer culture is rooted in anarchism, anti-capitalism and a fight for fairness. E.g. early internet culture, the open source community.
Imo it's very nice to see explicit anti-capitalist movements within tech, because the other side of tech is so completely over the top capitalist.
lynx97 2 hours ago [-]
anti-capitalism, while a bit strange a lable, is something I can sympathize with. But once we are talking anarchism and (intersectional) feminism in a computing context, I am definitely out. I miss the time when computing was a lot less political. It was nice hacking on projects without having to identify with something totally unrelated, or being forced to support idiologies just to be a part of it.
boudin 1 hours ago [-]
The web originally was way closer to anarchism and I really miss that. It was a cluster of self-organising communities, little to no intervention from the state, a lot was not profit driven.
Same with IRC.
colechristensen 25 minutes ago [-]
The web was invented at CERN and spread through universities and got taken up by nerds. It could not possibly have been more state sponsored.
boudin 15 minutes ago [-]
And the Internet was state sponsored too, at the time though it was not even legal to create communication networks in a lot of countries. But that's the premises, it doesn't mean
But what it gave birth to was a form of anarchy. One doesn't go against the other, the same way a political regime can change within a country.
tolerance 1 hours ago [-]
> I miss the time when computing was a lot less political.
Whether such a time ever existed is debatable.
Here's a test. Define the period that you're imagining. Then investigate this period as a point in the history of computing with its broader sociopolitical contexts.
Somewhere in the midst of that milieu I reckon or the politics you're likely to be fond to mix with your tech projects.
colechristensen 23 minutes ago [-]
Most "conservative" opinions are basically "I miss when I was young and wasn't aware of all of the stuff happening around me and want modern reality to be like my incorrect perception of how things were in my youth"
tenuousemphasis 1 hours ago [-]
If you at all understood any of those three things you would know that they are all closely related.
atoav 48 minutes ago [-]
IMO it depends very much on how those positions are being forced on those attending. Since this is about permacomputing I suspect not all that much.
In my experience these self-given-labels just express the views of some founding members and are often used to clarify who they do not want (capitalist, misogynist authoritarians) and who is welcome (left leaning people, women, people who know how to treat women, people who can respect flat hierarchies).
I find it a bit edgy to self label an encouraging like that, instead of explaining the meat of it (we are anticapitalist, because..., we are feminist, so women are welcome, we are anarchist, so our organization is structured with a flat hierarchy). Since it is an anarchist space, that is anti-authoritarian you probably won't find much indoctrination.
tolerance 2 hours ago [-]
> In the end it's nerds messing with hardware.
Am I being lazy or does this imply that all (or true) nerds are anarchist anti-capitalist feminists.
t-3 2 hours ago [-]
No. Some $x do $y does not imply that all/most/many/true $x do $y. It implies that some $x do $y.
tolerance 1 hours ago [-]
Right. But "in the end" people who participate in "permacomputing" per the websites stated values represent a subset of nerds. I think the rebuttal we're commenting on oversimplifies this.
lynx97 1 hours ago [-]
Well, yes, but no. Hacker Community projects increasingly force political agendas on participants. It gets harder and harder to just do tech stuff without having to align with some cabal.
stackghost 1 hours ago [-]
Being apolitical just means your politics align with the status quo. Technology is inherently political in nature, because it affects society in material ways.
boomlinde 1 hours ago [-]
Yes, you're being lazy
HerbManic 1 hours ago [-]
I get why you wouldn't see this as inviting.
But we need to merge the humanities with technology because if both sides ignore the other than both sides will blindly walk into the worst out comes of the other side.
But still: It's okay to enjoy the mindful and resilient and ecological aspects and not enjoy some other aspect.
> It's okay to enjoy the mindful and resilient and ecological aspects and not enjoy some other aspect.
I don't object to this in the most general sense. But I also think that a little tact can go a long way from the organization's side to anticipate where the public can't exercise it on their own.
Unfortunately the fashion is now for orgs and movements to declare their own intersections, which does nothing to further the core issues, while actively repelling those outside the intersection (which, by the time you’ve intersected a bunch of different things, is nearly everyone).
There is nothing inherently “post-Marxist” or “decolonial” about the core ideas here (scare quotes because these are extra-unhelpfully underdefined terms). Framing the project this way just signals that non-post-Marxists (etc.) will not be welcome, which makes it quite hard to enjoy the good bits for people who have been pre-declared to be the enemy.
Successful orgs are laser-focused on their core purpose.
With things like Secureboot, TPM modules and ever increasing demands to lock down systems, there is the risk that even libre software will be snuffed out. While not those technologies explicitly, similar less friendly things may come up in future. And when that happens, being beholden to billion dollar hardware companies won't seem so friendly. A little alarmist, but I didn't think we would be were we are today as it is.
One interesting area is about how to make software that is not hardware locked but easy enough to implement with very little work involved.
This is where projects such as UXN come in. https://100r.co/site/uxn.html
A system spec that is only 32 instructions deep, something that a single person could implement in less than a week. Essentially the hardest part is building the hardware Abstraction Layer. It wouldn't be efficient but it is very portable and thus makes it resilient to any future possible shocks.
https://permacomputing.net/Community/
Arguably the environmental benefit of an American farm replacing a 10 year old tractor with an electric model isn't nearly as good for the environment as a farm in India replacing a 70 year old tractor that leaks gallons of oil per month with a 50 year old tractor that doesn't.
Capitalists don't understand how to apply cost-to-benefit ratios to anything outside themselves. There is no global entity making sure resources are spent responsibly or equitably at scale.
Lots of computer culture is rooted in anarchism, anti-capitalism and a fight for fairness. E.g. early internet culture, the open source community.
Imo it's very nice to see explicit anti-capitalist movements within tech, because the other side of tech is so completely over the top capitalist.
But what it gave birth to was a form of anarchy. One doesn't go against the other, the same way a political regime can change within a country.
Whether such a time ever existed is debatable.
Here's a test. Define the period that you're imagining. Then investigate this period as a point in the history of computing with its broader sociopolitical contexts.
Somewhere in the midst of that milieu I reckon or the politics you're likely to be fond to mix with your tech projects.
In my experience these self-given-labels just express the views of some founding members and are often used to clarify who they do not want (capitalist, misogynist authoritarians) and who is welcome (left leaning people, women, people who know how to treat women, people who can respect flat hierarchies).
I find it a bit edgy to self label an encouraging like that, instead of explaining the meat of it (we are anticapitalist, because..., we are feminist, so women are welcome, we are anarchist, so our organization is structured with a flat hierarchy). Since it is an anarchist space, that is anti-authoritarian you probably won't find much indoctrination.
Am I being lazy or does this imply that all (or true) nerds are anarchist anti-capitalist feminists.
But we need to merge the humanities with technology because if both sides ignore the other than both sides will blindly walk into the worst out comes of the other side.