User:Ssstephen/Reading/permacomputing Principles

Available https://permacomputing.net/Principles/

There are a lot of individual principles in this booklet I agree with (shortened below):

• "Avoid pseudosimplicity"

• "Low complexity is beautiful"

• "Abundance thinking". I have some reservations about the post-scarcity reference in this context but mostly this seems like a good spin on that idea.

• "Design for descent". This feels a little like a prepper thing to say, which I think may be veering towards conspiracy theories (and also not in my opinion a healthy attitude towards how to solve urgent existential threats in our ecosystem). On the other hand the anti-economic message this might be suggesting is a great idea, and maybe a more specific idea I would agree with is design for deflation.

• "Keep it flexible". This entire section I agree with strongly. "In an ideal and elegant system, the three factors (smallness, simplicity and flexibility) support each other." This modularity idea is shown best by (some) computer systems, and I think in fact could be implemented in other aspects of society/permaculture to good effect. Of course this also makes we want to make more modular synths.

• "Grow roots to a solid ground". This is a much nicer phrasing than "build on a solid ground", showing the work put in by the organism to reach the solid ground. And also the way it integrates itself into the ecosystem (roots binding the soil are part of what makes the ground solid).

• "Amplify awareness".

• "You dont need to twiddle with everything in order to understand it".

• "Nothing is 'universal'. Even computers, 'universal calculators' that can be readapted to any task, are full of quirks that stem from the cultures that created them. Don't take them as the only way things can be, or as the most 'rational' or 'advanced' way."

• "Strict utilitarianism impoverishes. Uselessness also has an important place, so appreciate it".

• "Think about technology as a rhizome rather than a highway of progress and constant obsolescence".

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On the other hand I wonder about the overall implication of this shift in approach to computing. Presumably this change in principles is intended to have an effect on computing, the earth and people (the biosphere?). Some of the thoughts in these principles sound anti-progress or anti-learning. Of course a part of this is necessary to achieve sustainability (anti-growth, anti-capitalism, anti-inflation), but to me there also seems to be a risk of stagnation in this idea. "Intelligence amplification was a good goal", are they suggesting we should give up on this goal, that there is enough intelligence in the ecosystem? Or maybe it is not anti-progress but they are suggesting it didnt work? Either way I disagree and think computers have more to offer as intelligence-amplifiers.

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Some individual principles that may be problematic:

• "Planned longevity". I get that this is as opposed to planned obsolescence, but other things that we have created recently with long life spans (and half-lives) are proving to be quite problematic, so I think this should be approached with caution.

• "Dependencies should be kept low". This is not how an ecosystem works. Maybe a more useful idea would be to keep dependencies small and modular, or to keep dependencies flexible (through standardised interfaces and interactions, and clear, translatable communication).

• "Human scale: A reasonable level of complexity for a computing system is that it can be entirely understood by a single person." This seems like an arbitrary measurement at best, and more likely an applied anthropocentric limit. There are plenty of things in the ecosystem that are too complicated for one human to understand (or care for).

• "Dont take anything for granted. Especially don't expect the infrastructure such as the power grid and global networking to continue working indefinitely." Again sounding a bit like preppers here. I get that the condition of the earth is in decline and on a disastrous course but should there be a space for that thought in a list of principles for permaculture/permacomputing? From another point of view, the idea of not taking anything for granted brings me back to my point about dependencies, surely a healthy ecosystem should be full of them.