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jl6
jamilton
I think it's a mistake to view any politics as bolted on. I think it's unlikely some people were interested in "mindful and resilient and ecological use of computing" completely apolitically, with no other political or ideological background.
This principles page doesn't seem to have any irrelevant politics to me.
bccdee
> There are huge environmental and societal issues in today's computing, and permacomputing specifically wants to challenge them in the same way as permaculture has challenged industrial agriculture.
Permacomputing seems like a body of values and practices that is extremely grounded in a particular political perspective.
It's odd to regard permaculture, degrowth, anarchism, decoloniality, intersectional feminism, etc. as completely orthogonal. They're all part of a shared tradition of thought—not an "omnicause," but an ecosystem. You won't find a lot of people who love intersectional feminism but hate decoloniality. Appropriately enough, plucking a single plant from the earth and then dismissing the rest of the garden is exactly the type of blinkered thinking which permaculture discourages.
xantronix
I might be biased, but, I'm curious to know if there is any specific part of the Permacomputing Principles page that stands out to you as particularly political above the rest. I don't think the intent is polarisation by any means, but I can see how this sort of movement would be a difficult pill for most to swallow. I still see plenty of value in laying down those grassroots for a future moment when the necessity for permacomputing may become much greater from a survival standpoint, or in the very least, maintenance of some sort of status quo of having people connected and with enough computing resources to continue meaningful work or maintain precious data.
myrmidon
> [...] permacomputing is an anti-capitalist political project. It is driven by several strands of anarchism, decoloniality, intersectional feminism, post-marxism, degrowth, ecologism.
xantronix
Fair, I was only looking at the page linked in the HN submission.
I guess at this point, I think it's fair to say:
1. They're not the central authority on permacomputing. You can implement the principles however you like. 2. If you find the principles objectionable simply because you saw an explicit statement of political alignment on their main page, maybe that's worth examining within yourself.
jamilton
That is not on the linked page. Where is it?
luqtas
so tackling emergent discussions on equality and justice of our bloody past is a non-go... why do you think "permacomputing" started to exist in the first place? to make rich people have more durable products? /s
MSFT_Edging
From wikipedia:
> 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.
perching_aix
I did not make past the first few paragraphs of the page due to it being a fancyword-salad, but I can see a quote from it here in the comments, and I see why you'd say this. The rest of my comment is more about what you wrote in the general case.
Unfortunately this is a two way road.
The more topics political factions gobble up, the worse this becomes. You may or may not have experienced completely benign words becoming very politically charged for example, same effect.
If you strip a subject from every related concern, it will feel pointless. People just won't have any way of relating to it. So these are diametrically opposed interests at their terminal points.
What I found works best is there being a movement on each respective polarized side instead.
nyc_data_geek1
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
HerbManic
I see you are playing the role of Cassandra today. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people in tech that are just covering their ears saying "la la la la! I CANT HEAR YOU!!!" as they don't want to hear these things.
They aren't bad people, not even close. We all do this to some degree. Its just that we all think we are the good virtuous people and yet all of us have some form of negative impact on the world, especially in the Western world.
zahlman
> Unfortunately, there are a lot of people in tech that are just covering their ears saying "la la la la! I CANT HEAR YOU!!!"
They are doing nothing of the sort. They are telling you that they have heard the argument countless times already, and disagree with it as strongly as ever.
I reject the implicit definition of "politics" required to make the argument (which does not agree with common use, even if dictionaries may fail to capture the subtlety); and I reject the notion that your side should be entitled to define the terms. Everyone knows what it means to "get political", and there is strong consensus that it does not include "let's go about the rest of our lives as we were already planning to do".
> Its just that we all think we are the good virtuous people and yet all of us have some form of negative impact on the world
There is no contradiction between "being the good virtuous people" and "having some form of negative impact on the world".
By my back of the envelope calculations, we produce something like 300kg of CO2 annually simply by breathing. I would prefer to continue to live, however.
mrhottakes
Correct. Technology is inherently political, and it has been for all of human history.
zahlman
[dead]
awongh
It's extremely hard for me to separate where we are now from the way that Moore's law dictates a pretty insane level of planned obsolescence for chips and therefore everything with a chip in it.
If we make batteries replaceable or whatever other thing, how much do we change this fundamental dynamic? I feel like it's not very much.
People are kidding themselves if they think somehow recycling ewaste or reusing your last-model iPhone is some kind of sea-change that will fix the environmental impacts of tech.
It also doesn't seem defensible to say we should just slow progress down- isn't that a world where we never get iPhones and AI? How could a computing field that moves slower than Moore's law even work?
I dislike a lot of these wasteful dynamics but I also don't know what the alternative is. Consumer tech and computing is still the poster child for the proponents of global free market economics for good reason. It's one of the least extractive, least wasteful, highest profit margin sectors of the economy.
It's just saying a lot about how wasteful the other sectors are that tech is so wasteful.
zahlman
> How could a computing field that moves slower than Moore's law even work?
Moore's Law has been breaking down for years already (to the point that people shift the goalposts as to what the actual quantity is that improves exponentially), so it's strange to ask. There are known physical limits that will prevent it from continuing indefinitely; and we aren't even that far away, to my understanding.
awongh
Moore's law is ending but the power laws of increased capacity and capability of computing in general continues at a similar rate- so this isn't a question of the specific technology of how many transistors you can fit in a given area.
Moore's law is just a stand-in for the planned obsolescence of all computing related things almost since computers were invented, and the fundamental tech question is always, when thing x gets 10x cheaper/faster, what new use case gets unlocked? Right now it's AI model capability. Maybe also battery tech.
The idea of the slow growth of computing smells to me like the Bill Gates quote about 640k of RAM being enough for anyone.
dwaltrip
Let's pick one example: E-waste.
It’s a negative externality.
We can argue about the magnitude and the details, but the basic fact remains.
There are ways of dealing with negative externalities. Some work better than others. The details do matter a lot. And we definitely need better ways of tackling problems like this, especially when the cost is less immediate. The more diffuse, temporally removed, downstream, hidden, or controversial it is, the harder it is to get people to take the problem seriously. Let alone actually do anything about it.
We can take on these challenges. Or we can largely ignore them / throw our hands in the air, and watch the consequences unfold.
As much as we are able to, I’d like to try the former. Computing can still move forward and innovate at a rapid rate.
awongh
We should definitely be doing better, and it's also clear that these negative externalities are not being priced in at all.
I do and would want to buy tech that I'm not coerced into to throwing away after a year. It's insane to be how many objects today have batteries that are sealed inside and are meant to be thrown away after- that should be regulated.
But that seems to me to be an implementation detail rather than aspect that's worthy of an entire manifesto.
I do think the political aspects of things like Ring and Flock cameras and Palantir are super important (the reenforcing of existing power structures part).
But I don't get the folding in of this idea that not consuming computing devices is part of the solution- Like I said, it feels like the planned obsolescence of all computing devices and software is fundamental to the field.
2snakes
Can we combine centrifuge element extraction with metal shredders? Crush all that ewaste and then make some things from it: recycling loop.
scared_together
> How could a computing field that moves slower than Moore's law even work?
We’ll probably find out soon, because even ignoring the environmental concerns there is a limit to how small transistors can get.
HerbManic
> It also doesn't seem defensible to say we should just slow progress down- isn't that a world where we never get iPhones and AI?
Honestly, that sounds kind of OK. A lot of the things I use a smart phone for are things that have been imposed on me rather than chosen.
Also if we never had smart phones I doubt social media would have such a grip on peoples minds nowadays. It would still be there but toned down a lot.
myrmidon
I completely agree. I find it generally remarkable that the whole sustainability/environmentalism cause still struggles to find conservative support, because those things are basically perfectly aligned, and preserving the environment should be a trivial sell to a conservative base (it's literally in the name).
I see significant blame with environmentalist orgs/pushes like this that are deliberately anti-conservative for little reason, not just with conservatives being hypocrites.
aleph_minus_one
> preserving the environment should be a trivial sell to a conservative base (it's literally in the name).
Be careful with such a statement: in the USA conservatism is defined as something different than what the Latin word origin suggests. See for example Russell Kirk's principles of conservatism:
> https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Conservatism_in_t...
zahlman
> A faith in custom, convention, and prescription.
> A recognition that innovation must be tied to existing traditions and customs, which entails a respect for the political value of prudence.[173]
100% compatible with environmentalism, described as "preserving the environment".
Environmentalism is also compatible with Haidt's findings about US conservatives valuing "sanctity"/"purity" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_foundations_theory).
HerbManic
I heard it said once, "Nowadays the right lives in denial, the left lives in delusion".
It is very reductionist but it does sort of hit on althe flavour of how these things go.
bccdee
Conservatives tend to gloss over what it is exactly that they want to conserve. The environment? No. Norms? Sometimes, but not always. Before the 19th century, abortion was relatively uncontroversial; anti-abortion rhetoric was a "conservative innovation."
What they always defend is social hierarchies. Anti-abortion rhetoric may break from the status quo, but it does so in defence of preserving women's role in society as obligate mothers. Starting wars in the Middle East isn't staid or responsible, but the performance of these wars situates America at the top of a symbolic hierarchy of global power.
If you dig into the fathers of modern conservative thought (people like Edmund Burke), one thing they were very concerned about was the preservation of aristocratic hierarchy beyond the end of monarchism. How can a liberal society maintain a class distinction between the rulers and the ruled? These are the intellectual roots of meritocracy: Let the free market pick winners without any interference by egalitarian meddlers, and the upper class will naturally select itself.
From this standpoint, the conservative disinterest in sustainability becomes obvious. The machines that are destroying the environment are owned by wealthy people whose fortunes may be destabilized by switching to a newer, more sustainable technologies. The conservative movement exists to protect the social status of the wealthy; therefore, concern for the environment is a liability.
philipallstar
[flagged]
helpfulmandrill
They elected a Jewish leader, so not that anti-Jew.
IshKebab
And often anti-green too, in a cut-off-their-nose way. E.g. until recently they were against nuclear power, and vehemently against HS2, apparently preferring that everyone drives instead.
botanrice
I don't think the idea is particularly polarized and you can choose to be inspired by the premise without buying into the political aspect of it, as you may do with many things.
That said, I do feel like it's cringe to say it's anti-capitalist, anarchist, etc.. I have very progressive values but just can't associate with liberal groups because of stuff like this. Like, why? Just promote the culture to everyone, capitalists, political ideologies, etc. By making that statement it is automatically turning off ppl that might otherwise join the cause, it's really not helping anything imo. Kinda annoyed me to see that as well.
realslimjd
What values do you have that are very progressive but not anticapitalist?
You say that you can't associate with liberal groups because of stuff like this, but liberals are not anticapitalist or anarchist. Leftists are anticapitalist but liberalism is basically advocating for softer capitalism, which is to say capitalism and strong individual rights, while leftism is focused on collectivism.
botanrice
honestly man I am not an expert at the terminology of liberal vs. leftist vs. progressive vs whatever. I'm just empathetic and care about uplifting our fellow citizens and want to support policies that do that, and ofc i see how capitalism harms people and the environment. but I also think that can be done without declaring the intersection of beliefs! if someone sympathizes with one of those things but hates two of the others then you've lost someone who might partake in your cause.
i also respect that there's a place for radical groups for sure, so hey, so be it if this group wants to run like this. just feels a shame to lead on a movement that can attract a wide swath of people with it's core concept but then exclude them if they don't share your exact beliefs, as OP was suggesting.
randusername
I think it's rad that folks are thinking more deeply about what mainstream computing is implicitly for and what a counter-culture would look like.
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.
HerbManic
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.
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.
pfortuny
This project appears here from time to time and each and every time I am amazed. Thanks for sharing it.
anthk
Nils Holm does permacomputing without writting fancy manifestos: https://t3x.org
T3X/0 will assemble binaries for Unix/DOS (maybe Windows) and CP/M.
S9 can do great stuff with very little.
Klong it's a mini APL-like CAS more bound to Statistics than Calculus. No fancy Unicode needed.
Also, Luxferre doing an ultra-minimal numeric VM:
https://codeberg.org/luxferre/mu808
Read the instructions, that mini VM it's surprisingly able.
Finally, Subleq+EForth from https://github.com/howerj/muxleq (muxleq it's just subleq with parallel mux running the exact same intstructions).
From the book you can boostrap EForth from itself with a minimal Subleq DEC file. Enough to run a Sokoban, a calculator (set complex numbers as binomials), and you can implement q+ q- q* q/ to calculate and reduce (lcm/mcm) fractions:
2 3 1 3 q+ .s
3 3 <ok>
/ .
1 <ok>
entaloneralie
There's a subleq host that runs eforth on uxn!
anthk
Muxleq support it's just a few lines of UXN away:
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/howerj/muxleq/refs/heads/m...
The speed should be much faster.
louismerlin
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 !
LennyHenrysNuts
I'm not a greenie by any stretch of the imagination but I'm a strong believer in Repair, Re-use, Recycle.
I'm writing this comment on a Lenovo Yoga I bought for $10 and fixed up. It's a quad core with 4GB of soldered RAM and a 128GB SSD but I slapped CachyOS on it and it works for nearly anything I want to do when I'm out and about. The battery lasts me about 3 1/2 hours. I've picked up CRT monitors for virtually nothing and they work just fine.
We throw things away too easily.
kakwa_
Are these principles really about sustainability?
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.
xantronix
I don't think the two are particularly incompatible. This seems more like a foundational statement than a demonstration of what permacomputing in current practice might look like. Sure, things like https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/ have a performance element to them, but it's meant to be illustrative of what can be achieved more than just prescriptive.
A very solid (but mundane) example of permacomputing today is just holding onto an old ThinkPad and using it for meaningful work rather than feeling the need to buy a new machine every couple years.
GistNoesis
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.
abricq
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.
320x200
Fair point, however the link between systemic and individual changes is not as binary as it may seem, it's long debated thing, but in a nutshell it's essentially a circular problem. Lot of permacomputing participants are involved into activist work and encourage coop forms of organization, collective action, creation/joining of unions, and make use of their technical skills to help less privileged groups (some of these encouragements are also listed in the principles). All of these things have impact on the perception of mainstream politics, capacity for change and how electoral politics could be activated. Maybe this could be made more explicit.
TrevorFSmith
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.
bccdee
> 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.
1313ed01
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.
Lanzaa
This didn't pass my sniff test. Each of the three key ethics; "Earth Care", "People Care", and "Fair Share", only appear once in the document. I feel like that is a clear rhetorical failure. "Fair Share" triggers my economic mind and made me look directly for their alternative to capitalism, they have none.
ps3udo
Related (and complementary): https://wiki.xxiivv.com/site/permacomputing.html
alexwennerberg
For any Bay Area folks, we have a permacomputing meetup. Planning on scheduling the next one, you can join the mailing list or RSS for updates
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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.