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 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.
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.
People balk at this not being an independent cause. Yet I’m skeptical.
Imagine this permaculture computing thing in an alternative reality. Very environmentally friendly—but very narrowly about computers. It has nothing to say about the usual individualistic moralisms, like recycling—and reuse/repurpose/recycle!—, anti-consumerism, not littering. In fact some of the local members are “pigs” and litter the street next to their headquarters. The broad membership are not vegetarian or vegan, not to any larger degree than the general public. They are just very concerned about sustainable computing.
Would this make sense to outsiders? No, I think we are very used to environmentalists caring about all things related to the environment. Sure, some people who care about veganism/vegetarianism (for animal or env. concerns) might say that it’s better if people drop meat some days of the week rather than none of them. That’s a thing. But on the whole I think people don’t balk at environmentalists “aligning” with all environmental causes instead of being inclusive, like: oh sure, you care about sustainable computing but not about sustainable food production, that’s fine. Welcome.
I think this is specifically about having a focused political message. Because having one-hundred litmus tests for individualistic behavior is totally fine... within the political mainstream thought.
The whole idea that pushing back against resource exhaustion and planned obsolescence is inherently apolitical is bunk, in fact. Politics are only "extra" and "bolted on" when you are comfortably benefiting from the status quo
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.
This is where EU policy is helping. Permacomputing only works when we have a significant number of devices that are easily usable beyond a usual lifespan. Whether the whole device is repair able or at least the key aspects such as battery to keep a working phone working, is essential. Although it's really only the first step of many. The next obvious one is to remove lockdown of bootloaders and firmware on devices and allow any software to be installed. Google are going the wrong way.
We are so far beyond needing regular purchasing of new devices. Functionality wise, in any significant form, devices haven't improved in many years. This yearly release cycle has become ludicrous and goes against everything we should be doing.
Fairphone, Framework, MNT, Shift, are all on the right track even if not perfect.
While I appreciate all the stuffs mentioned here, I believe they are missing something: people should *go vote at all the elections*, and advocate for a system-level change. Systemic resilience instead of personal habits.
Pretty much all their suggestions are to be applied on personal-level. And I agree with those. But they could be made 100x easier if there was some help provided by localities, municipalities & states. I'd love to know better my neighbors & exchange skills & objects, but i'd be much easier if there was a *free* repair-coffee in the neighborhood.
One example from the article: one of the suggestion for "hope for the best prepare for the worst" is "start a local repair cafe". But come on ! With what money ? With what time ? Where ? Opening a repair café is the kind of stuff is by nature non-profitable, therefore the business of the states.
All i'm trying to say is: let's just not forget that this is a political concern, and we can vote for these stuffs.
Every effort doesn't need to address every problem, I think. You're right that individual effort isn't sufficient and many of the permacomputing folks are also activists of varying sorts but I think it's ok to separate concerns as most people understand that there's no single and complete solution.
Can we? We can vote for a party, but I don't know that any party here has permacomputing in their platform. If you want to add something to a party's platform, the usual way to do that is lobbying, but who can afford lobbyists? The alternative—grassroots activism—tends to involve a lot of stuff like local repair cafes that attract volunteers and get people talking.
- T3X0 and a lot more languages from there will compile to Unix, DOS and even CP/M. There's a Tetris clone, some shooter, a Ladder clone, some editor...
- S9 Scheme has Ncurses and sockets support, it can do a lot, basically all the exercises from Computer Abstractions. If you are good enough at Scheme you might do SICP by reusing the graphics.scm code for (frame)
- Klong it's an APL/K like language but without odd symbols. It comes with a greats book on statistics.
- MLite it's a great ML/Haskell-like intro
- NHM Basic it's more like a toy Basic but it can do a lot with a bit of effort
It seems to be far more geared toward promoting some sort of misplaced post-collapse resiliency.
In other words: solving some hypothetical issues on the other side of a catastrophe for a world we don't know anything about, and almost ignoring present and actual problems.
The root of this problem is linked to the difficulty of manufacturing chips at home. Some people are already doing this in their home lab (don't get me wrong the chemicals involved are really nasty).
The main problem is economical. Big factories benefits from economies of scale, which mean the ecosystem for one off prototypes chips couldn't really develop.
For advanced devices the transistor must be small so the process used ever-shrinking wavelength to engrave the silicon wafers. The whole industry took the Extreme-UV lithography route, which required big machines and investments.
But the alternative was there all-along (reminiscent of 3d-printer vs mass fabrication). Instead of using light to engrave the wafer use particles : For example mask-less electron beam lithography where you scan a beam of electron like in old TVs. It still have problems scaling up because you are writing a single point instead of projecting an image, but achievable resolution can be higher, and multi-beam systems are on the horizon to solve this speed issue.
With software and IP cost going down and humans no longer needed in the loop due to advanced robotics, most safety issues can be contained more easily.
Browsing that wiki in the past and two pages that resonated with me were on the topic of stable APIs (that is a topic in need of much more discussion overall). There are some good thoughts there.
34 comments
[ 2.2 ms ] story [ 73.7 ms ] threadhttps://permacomputing.net/Community/
... an anti-capitalist political project. ... anarchism ... intersectional feminism ...
No, thanks. I thought it was a tech project. Apparently not.
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.
Imagine this permaculture computing thing in an alternative reality. Very environmentally friendly—but very narrowly about computers. It has nothing to say about the usual individualistic moralisms, like recycling—and reuse/repurpose/recycle!—, anti-consumerism, not littering. In fact some of the local members are “pigs” and litter the street next to their headquarters. The broad membership are not vegetarian or vegan, not to any larger degree than the general public. They are just very concerned about sustainable computing.
Would this make sense to outsiders? No, I think we are very used to environmentalists caring about all things related to the environment. Sure, some people who care about veganism/vegetarianism (for animal or env. concerns) might say that it’s better if people drop meat some days of the week rather than none of them. That’s a thing. But on the whole I think people don’t balk at environmentalists “aligning” with all environmental causes instead of being inclusive, like: oh sure, you care about sustainable computing but not about sustainable food production, that’s fine. Welcome.
I think this is specifically about having a focused political message. Because having one-hundred litmus tests for individualistic behavior is totally fine... within the political mainstream thought.
> Politics is the activity of settling affairs in an organized society.
Not sure how any strongly held belief doesn't resolve down to politics.
Politics is life whether you want to accept it or not. Ignoring it is ignoring your place in society and the direction it takes at large.
No decision is truly apolitical.
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.
We are so far beyond needing regular purchasing of new devices. Functionality wise, in any significant form, devices haven't improved in many years. This yearly release cycle has become ludicrous and goes against everything we should be doing.
Fairphone, Framework, MNT, Shift, are all on the right track even if not perfect.
Pretty much all their suggestions are to be applied on personal-level. And I agree with those. But they could be made 100x easier if there was some help provided by localities, municipalities & states. I'd love to know better my neighbors & exchange skills & objects, but i'd be much easier if there was a *free* repair-coffee in the neighborhood.
One example from the article: one of the suggestion for "hope for the best prepare for the worst" is "start a local repair cafe". But come on ! With what money ? With what time ? Where ? Opening a repair café is the kind of stuff is by nature non-profitable, therefore the business of the states.
All i'm trying to say is: let's just not forget that this is a political concern, and we can vote for these stuffs.
Can we? We can vote for a party, but I don't know that any party here has permacomputing in their platform. If you want to add something to a party's platform, the usual way to do that is lobbying, but who can afford lobbyists? The alternative—grassroots activism—tends to involve a lot of stuff like local repair cafes that attract volunteers and get people talking.
https://t3x.org
https://luxferre.top of effort) and vm's like mu808, and Scoundrel can be adapted to S9, T3X0, MLite, NMH Basic on hours.It seems to be far more geared toward promoting some sort of misplaced post-collapse resiliency.
In other words: solving some hypothetical issues on the other side of a catastrophe for a world we don't know anything about, and almost ignoring present and actual problems.
our system has a bounding box of Truth, Freedom, Harmony, & Love.
The main problem is economical. Big factories benefits from economies of scale, which mean the ecosystem for one off prototypes chips couldn't really develop.
For advanced devices the transistor must be small so the process used ever-shrinking wavelength to engrave the silicon wafers. The whole industry took the Extreme-UV lithography route, which required big machines and investments.
But the alternative was there all-along (reminiscent of 3d-printer vs mass fabrication). Instead of using light to engrave the wafer use particles : For example mask-less electron beam lithography where you scan a beam of electron like in old TVs. It still have problems scaling up because you are writing a single point instead of projecting an image, but achievable resolution can be higher, and multi-beam systems are on the horizon to solve this speed issue.
With software and IP cost going down and humans no longer needed in the loop due to advanced robotics, most safety issues can be contained more easily.
The language on this site seems to position permacomputing in opposition to an unethical status quo.
Personally I'd rather more of a solarpunk computing initiative.
Instead of identity defined by what you are fleeing, define it by what you are running towards.
https://permacomputing.net/software_rot/
https://permacomputing.net/bedrock_platform/
I run an old laptop, my last one was replaced solely because of the web browser dragging it down.
From that view, something like frog find (https://frogfind.superglobalmegacorp.com/) is what is needed.
https://alexwennerberg.com/permacomputing.html