Perma-Hybridity

We do not want interoperability to be limited to machines and protocols at the present time. The true value of making different technologies work together is to pursue a technological ecosystem made for old and new tools to work together. Let’s fight obsolescence with permacomputing, let’s defeat the standardization of the new with hybridation.

Inspired by Lovink’s Principles of Perma-Hybridity:

The uprising against planned obsolescence is well underway: Extraction Rebellion. The solution will not just be less consumption + recycling, but it will come from a full-scale integration of old and new products and services. The challenge will be to design and scale up these modes of perma-hybridity. What Ocean-Cleanup is rolling out in the Pacific Ocean for plastics will soon be done for hardware, software and related infrastructures. Material nets collecting everything from record players, DVD and VHS players, PCs, tablets and laptops, synthesizers, mobile and smartphones, switches, motherboards and amplifiers, Walkman, iPods, radios, TVs to video projectors. Analog, digital, scheißegal. Gathering them will only be stage one, hybridizing them stage two; synthesizing past and present, high and low tech. The integration of second-life hardware into the everyday life of the billions is upon us. Welcome to the fifth industrial revolution.