8 ms·

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 o

• stackghost 5mo 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 5mo 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.
  • zozbot234 5mo 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.
    • wizzwizz4 5mo ago
      It is? The left-wing radicals I'm aware of are all very big on community. My understanding of the corresponding "right-wing" value is that community should be a certain way (with the radical right-wing value being that it must be a certain way, for various incompatible versions of "right way"). The radical left-wing response would be an insistence on the validity of other forms of community (notably including relationship anarchy: polycules, queer-platonic relationships, etc), the promotion of community organising (such as unions, food distribution networks, mutual aid networks, communes), and so on – which I can understand might appear to be an opposition to "community", if your understanding of "community" is narrowly-defined (e.g. as referring to the traditional practices of your cultural group), but the radical left-wingers certainly don't think they're opposing community. If you're thinking of corporate activisty types, the sort of people who promote hamfisted "everyone with light skin has internalised racism" mandatory training, then I'd wager the "corporate" part has something to do with what you've observed. I would certainly call such people "aspiring-radical", and I might even call them tepidly left-wing (especially with respect to the US's Overton window), but I think "left-wing radical" might be a misnomer, since the radicality is unrelated to the left-wing nature. There are strong first-principles reasons to expect that this politics does a significant disservice to members of the groups it's nominally attempting to help (and that's before you factor in the backlash we're currently seeing). But I've never found the "left-wing" / "right-wing" dichotomy to be helpful for anything other than identifying The Enemy™ (which I consider a generally counterproductive activity), so take what I say here with a pinch of salt.
      • zozbot234 5mo ago
        > If you're thinking of corporate activisty types, the sort of people who promote hamfisted "everyone with light skin has internalised racism" mandatory training, then I'd wager the "corporate" part has something to do with what you've observed. The thing about corporations is that they internally run on politics and a fixed hierarchy of command and control. No different than a resolutely "anti-capitalist" government office! You can think of this as an 'anarchist' observation if you want, but it's just a fact of life. So when we see corporate activism come up with such hamfisted ideas that we wouldn't see in less "activist" corporations, this has to tell us something about the merit of the underlying politics. Anyway, the thing about traditional communities, in this context - the ones that "have to be a certain way" because they've been that way for generations - is that they have immense inertia; they create real social ties that can bind people together and make them resilient even in the face of very real, structural, systemic oppression. I don't see "polycules" as achieving that in the near term, even though that kind of fluid free association is undeniably the very earliest step towards what I'm thinking about. A traditional community is not going to just dissolve when the going get tough, or when interpersonal conflicts arise (and such conflicts are inevitable in large-enough groups!): they uniquely encourage people who might otherwise dislike each other to cooperate for collective benefit. There is great value in that, which is not often acknowledged.
  • jl6 5mo 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.
    • beepbooptheory 5mo ago
      People are generally not "post-Marxist" or "decolonial," concepts/frameworks are. These are just theoretical markers, not something necessarily one identifies with in the way you suggest. And I would be curious to know why you are so certain that none of the "core ideas" of permacomputing have bearing to either of these things, if you believe they are so underdefined. Little bit of kettle logic there, no? This is such a genre of comment on here when you can Ctrl-F 'Marx' on the content, and it just really comes off uncurious and reflexive every time. Like, why is the burden on the authors and not you to sort through the things you care about and don't? Why is it not an opportunity to learn? Do you even care to know where they could possibly be coming from? If there is ever some kind of overlap between something you can get behind and something for whatever reason you feel is bad or "underdefined," doesn't that stir even a bit of curiosity, a chance to learn? Even if it's just sharpening what you already know? You don't have to end up agreeing with it, but to frame all this as advice on how to "be a successful org" is just not great here imo.
      • jl6 5mo ago
        When I don’t put salt in my coffee, it’s not because I’m uncurious about what salt is, and nor does it mean I don’t appreciate salt in other contexts. But if a coffee shop only sells salted coffee, the burden is definitely on them to understand why they have so few customers. (And for my part I’ve seen enough shops that claim to be coffee shops but are actually salt shops).
• knuppar 5mo ago
  This sounds like a fence sitter take. Everything is political and not acknowledging that is part of the problem.
  • its-summertime 5mo ago
    I think it would be a better approach to not pre-emptively burn oneself out with stress by viewing everything through a political lens at all times.
    • deleted 5mo ago
      [deleted]
    • wolvesechoes 5mo ago
      But everything that touches how society functions, what it values, how it is organized etc. is political.
      • oersted 5mo ago
        There are several senses to "politics". You are right in that, in the general sense, politics is any collective negotiation of what matters to the group. There are objectively optimal ways to achieve a goal, but choosing what goals to pursue, and what benefits are worth what costs, and who they will affect, that is rather subjective and the realm of politics. In that sense politics is fundamental and valuable. But in a more concrete sense, politics also refers to our tendency to join opposing teams or tribes and fight it out, more or less literally. In that sense, "everything is political" can mean viewing everything as a fight between groups, or worse, associating everything to the conflict between the two dominant groups. That is quite toxic.
  • lithos 5mo ago
    Look a Redditor.
• myrmidon 5mo ago
  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.
  • philipallstar 5mo ago
    [flagged]
    • IshKebab 5mo ago
      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.
      • philipallstar 5mo ago
        Yep. Very pro anti.
    • helpfulmandrill 5mo ago
      They elected a Jewish leader, so not that anti-Jew.
      • philipallstar 5mo ago
        This guy[0]? I imagine he thinks of himself as the good Jew. [0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cp8p7k4k8xno https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cp8p7k4k8xno
        • bccdee 5mo ago
          No? I imagine, in this context, that he thinks of himself as an advocate against police violence, since he retweeted a video of cops kicking a man in the head and said he thought it was bad. Doesn't seem particularly Jewish to me, one way or another. Kind of a weird comment, imo.
• xantronix 5mo ago
  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 5mo ago
    > [...] permacomputing is an anti-capitalist political project. It is driven by several strands of anarchism, decoloniality, intersectional feminism, post-marxism, degrowth, ecologism.
    • luqtas 5mo ago
      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
      • myrmidon 5mo ago
        Discussions on colonialism and sustainable computing are completely unrelated topics by themselves (as is post-marxism). You can advocate for sustainability, right-to-repair, privacy etc. while being strongly capitalist just fine. The point is that the page puts "correct" political alignment very prominently, excluding a large intersection of people otherwise interested in the non-political parts of the movement.
        • mrtesthah 5mo ago
          This is probably more of an attempt to make computing relevant to that “intersectional” subset of people who only consider a topic to be relevant if it relates to colonialism in some way.
• yawpitch 5mo ago
  If you see a substantial amount of bolted on extra politics on that page there’s a good chance you are experiencing the symptoms of polarization.
  • perching_aix 5mo ago
    How do you reckon they'd tell it apart without also experiencing (or having experienced) it? If you do have an answer to this, why are you accusing him of it regardless?
    • yawpitch 5mo ago
      There’s no accusation, just like there’s nothing particularly political or polarized in that piece. One can imagine an accusation, precisely as one can imagine the particularly political where it doesn’t actually exist. As for how to discern the difference, well that’s the purpose of critical thinking and metacognition.
      • perching_aix 5mo ago
        So are you supposing they either lack or had blanked on their critical thinking and metacognition somehow, or how did you arrive at the conclusion that they are merely "experiencing the symptoms of polarization" then instead? Why couldn't they have simply also just used the same critical thinking and metacognition you yourself seem to be so proud of, to reach their conclusion? Maybe you're the one who's so aligned to the politics on that page that you're experiencing such symptoms after all? Exhibiting in retaliatory coded insults and DARVO maybe?
        • yawpitch 5mo ago
          You truly do have an impressive imagination. Again, there’s no insult, there’s simply an observation. Nothing on that page is particularly political from any position but a substantially polarized one. It’s not entirely apolitical, sure, but it’s pretty milquetoast for a manifesto. If you see polarization there it’s because you’re looking through a polarized filter, in the literal photographic sense as much as the political one: you’ve rotated your filter frame to minimize reflections of what you do like and maximize visibility of what you don’t like. If you’re offended by it, you’re looking at it from such an orthogonal direction that you really should check if you’re the one whose biases are on display. Everyone should engage their critical thinking and develop their capacity for metacognition; no one starts with either of those skill sets, and thus I assume neither in anyone (and everyone, including myself) until I see evidence of either or both. I, very gently, pointed in the direction of engaging those skills and you see violence where violence isn’t, just like you imagine excessive pride where there cannot be any at all. Perhaps you’ve also been primed to see violence where none exists? To feel as extreme what isn’t extreme because you’ve moved (or been moved) towards the extreme? Again, not an ad hominem… just a question we should all be asking ourselves all the time.
• perching_aix 5mo ago
  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.
• keybored 5mo ago
  This by itself looks like a popular topic here (judging by the votes to comment ratio). But as is expected the topic gets derailed because people would like resilience, mindful use, and ecological care truly by themselves, not within a particular whole, or certainly not the whole that is proposed. But people like this genuinely think that these things are causally interconnected. And that treating them as separate things is counter-productive. They are not on a mission to make as small an intersection as possible. They want to solve the problem. But they think that the Whole that needs to be considered is much larger than you would think. As a detached and hypothtical example: what does the non-political and anti-fossil fuel environmentalist cause look like in a city which is built on the fossil fuel industry? There isn’t one. Making it non-political is impossible. There are clear competing interests at play. You could make an environmentalist club where you volunteer to clean up litter. The grocery clerk as well as the oil executive are just as likely to join that club. But it wouldn’t have anything to do with the anti-fossil fuel cause. Another hypothetical example. Being anti-war. Can such a group be anti-imperialism? To avoid Western blinders, just imagine Russian imperalism. What would a Russian anti-war but not anti-imperalism group look like? Clearly you cannot call the Russian invasion of Ukraine “imperialistic”. The war apologist would say that it is necessary to denazify Ukraine or something. So what are you fighting for? Allow wars that are imperialistic but advocate for more non-combatant aid in terms of supplies and health personel? I mean that would be “anti-war” in terms of reducing suffering. But it could never, ever hope to end any war. There are people that are radical. They think that certain problems have root causes. So they get at the root of the problem, as they see it. This idea of having many loose causes doesn’t make sense in their world view. It’s like fighting weeds by trimming the edges every day. The weeds will always be there.
  • botanrice 5mo ago
    Using your own final example: could you not argue that if you trim the edges every day to fight weeds (read: practice permacomputing as a daily lifestyle), then over time the weeds may never grow to their fullest extent? And that if you get more and more people to help you trim the edges then over time you may establish a new 'edge' so to speak? (read: status quo). But by telling people that they aren't really welcome to help you trim unless they agree that they must attack the root of the weeds, even tho that's really hard! I think that's the wrong way to think about the idea of environmentalism! We should encourage everyone to do whatever they find intersting and helpful. If the oil exec wants to do river clean-ups every weekend then why even balk at that? It's not black & white, it's great that in this theoretically scenario they want to even do that. Maybe over time they realize that the river keeps getting dirty because of their business actions, who knows?
• jamilton 5mo ago
  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 5mo ago
    > 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.
    • deleted 5mo ago
      [deleted]
    • hitekker 5mo ago
      I'm unconvinced. https://duskos.org/ https://duskos.org/ doesn't tell a story about fashionable ideologies fused-together for the greater good. Dusk/Collapse OS does what it says on the tin, minus moralizing and metaphors. In any case, I detect an omnicause because people are sloganeering on its behalf below: "If you see this as political, you should fix yourself", "computing is related to colonialism", "everything is political" etc.
• botanrice 5mo ago
  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 5mo ago
    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 5mo ago
      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.
• dyauspitr 5mo ago
  Politics is essentially your model of the entire world. It’s essentially inextricably present in everything you do.
• awongh 5mo ago
  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.
  • scared_together 5mo ago
    > 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.
  • dwaltrip 5mo ago
    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 5mo ago
• keybored 5mo ago
  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.
• nyc_data_geek1 5mo ago
  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
  • mrhottakes 5mo ago
    Correct. Technology is inherently political, and it has been for all of human history.
  • HerbManic 5mo ago
    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 5mo ago
      > 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.
• goodpoint 5mo ago
  "resilient and ecological use of computing" or of anything else is inherently political, like it or not.
• MSFT_Edging 5mo ago
  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.
• theodric 5mo ago
  But everything is political, don't'cha know