this post was submitted on 22 Oct 2023
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Permacomputing

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Computing to support life on Earth

Computing in the age of climate crisis is often wasteful and adds nothing useful to our real life communities. Here we try to find out how to change that.

Definition and purpose of permacomputing: http://viznut.fi/files/texts-en/permacomputing.html

XMPP chat: https://movim.slrpnk.net/chat/lowtech%40chat.disroot.org/room

Sister community over at lemmy.sdf.org: [email protected]

There's also a wiki: https://permacomputing.net/

Website: http://wiki.xxiivv.com/site/permacomputing.html

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What is Permacomputing? (damaged.bleu255.com)
submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Permacomputing is a term originating from the demoscene, known for squeezing the most out of very restricted computing resources, such as the 4k intro with a maximum executable file size of 4096 bytes.

Permaculture uses methods that lets nature do the work, minimizing the reliance on artificial energy. Heikkilä sees similarities between how both permaculture practitioners and hackers find clever solutions to problems. He writes that the existence of computers can only be justified by their ability to augment the potential of humans to have a strengthening effect on ecosystems.

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Wonderful. For what it's worth I'm here and I support this area of thought and work very very much. It seems to be another battlefield in the science wars or adjacent - techies getting mad because people are trying to comment socially (or in this case ecosocially) on what they, the diehard techies, regard as objective reality in their domain of study. Well it doesn't mean we can't endeavor to think in an interdisciplinary way here. It's weird how militant even many of these open source 'anarchist' zealots get about some people trying to see what they can do about addressing the issue of a massive machine of planetary destruction. I mean it seems right up their alley otherwise.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

Welcome to permacomputing!

I used to be fairly tech-optimistic, but I'd now call myself tech-cautious. I'm still as giddy and excited as before about moving (or digital) parts functioning beautifully together, but I also demand they do no damage to the living world and/or the fabric of communities. Which means reevaluating the tech we use, for example collecting and publishing energy use for different technologies. Their usefulness, resources spent, harm caused needs to be part of the decision whether we actually want certain tech to exist.