What is Permacomputing?

Permacomputing

In my last post I wrote about the Critical Infrastructure Lab launch event, held in Amsterdam. I attended the two day event and will soon write my report and post it on the Bassetti Foundation website, but I couldn’t wait to write about the most engaging and challenging things I came across, at a workshop led by Ola Bonati and Lucas Engelhardt: the concept and practices of permacomputing.

As you might imagine, the concept is related to the nature practices of permaculture, it encourages a more sustainable approach that not only takes into account energy use and hardware and software lifespans but also promotes the use of already available computational resources.

From the starting point that technology has harmed nature, the concept aims to re-center technology and practice and enter into better relations with the Earth.

Practitioners propose a series of research methods that include living labs (we promote this approach in Responsible Innovation research too), science critique, interdisciplinarity and artistic research, which as many readers will know is very close to my own heart. Fields include Ecosystems and computational conditions of biodiversity, Sustainability and toxicity of computation and Biodigitality and bioelectric energy.The Permacomputing network wiki contains the following principles (as well as going into much more detail of all of the above)

Care for life, Create low-power systems that strengthens the biosphere and use the wide-area network sparingly. Minimize the use of artificial energy, fossil fuels and mineral resources. Don’t create systems that obfuscate waste.

Care for the chips. Production of new computing hardware consumes a lot of energy and resources. Therefore, we need to maximize the lifespans of hardware components – especially microchips, because of their low material recyclability.

Keep it small. Small systems are more likely to have small hardware and energy requirements, as well as high understandability. They are easier to understand, manage, refactor and repurpose.

Hope for the best but prepare for the worst. It is a good practice to keep everything as resilient and collapse-tolerant as possible even if you don’t believe in these scenarios.

Keep it flexible. Flexibility means that a system can be used in a vast array of purposes, including ones it was not primarily designed for. Flexibility complements smallness and simplicity. In an ideal and elegant system, the three factors (smallness, simplicity and flexibility) support each other.

Build on solid ground. It is good to experiment with new ideas, concepts and languages, but depending on them is usually a bad idea. Appreciate mature technologies, clear ideas and well-understood theories when building something that is intended to last.

Amplify awareness. Computers were invented to assist people in their cognitive processes. “Intelligence amplification” was a good goal, but intelligence may also be used narrowly and blindly. It may therefore be a better idea to amplify awareness.

Expose everything. Don’t hide information!

Respond to changes. Computing systems should adapt to the changes in their operating environments (especially in relation to energy and heat). 24/7 availability of all parts of the system should not be required, and neither should a constant operating performance (e.g. networking speed).

Everything has its place. Be part of your local energy/matter circulations, ecosystems and cultures. Cherish locality, avoid centralization. Strengthen the local roots of the technology you use and create.

There is also a page of concepts and ideas that are needed to discuss permacomputing and a library. You can find links to projects, technology assessments and information about courses and workshops, as well as lots of communities to investigate and join, and how to contribute to the wiki.

Why not join the discussion and spread the word?

Computing Within LIMITS 2023, call for papers

LIMITS in Computing

Last year I attended the LIMITS 2022, posting about the experience here.  The organizers have just published the following call for papers for the 2023 workshop:

The LIMITS workshop concerns the role of computing in human societies situated in a world of limits*. This interdisciplinary group of researchers, practitioners and scholars seek to reshape the computing research agenda, grounded by an awareness that contemporary computing research is intertwined with ecological limits in general, and climate- and climate justice-related limits in particular. LIMITS 2023 solicits submissions that move us closer towards computing that support diverse human and non-human lifeforms and thriving biospheres.

* For example, limits of extractive logics, limits to a biosphere’s ability to recover, limits to our knowledge, or limits to technological “solutions”.

Call For Papers

We welcome scholarship by researchers, engineers, designers, and artists who are investigating and/or (re)designing computing systems that engage with pressing ecological and social issues. We also invite works that build on previous LIMITS work, such as provocations from earlier LIMITS gatherings (e.g., Unplanned Obsolescence, LIMITS 2017), that broadens the understanding of LIMITS (e.g., Age of Consequences, LIMITS 2015), that explores our own limits (e.g., Computing within Psychological Limits, LIMITS 2015), that explores strategies for working in a LIMITed world (e.g., Limits-aware computing, LIMITS 2015), or that design and/or build transitional systems (e.g., Solar-powered website, LIMITS 2021). Transitional systems attempt to (re) design, implement, and/or evaluate a real-world or hypothetical socio-technical computing system in response to “implications for design” raised by earlier LIMITS papers or LIMITS-related scholarship in the areas of computing and sustainability, computing and climate-justice.

We also encourage authors to consider the stories they tell and reify through their work. As Costanza-Chock reminds us, “Stories have power”. They ask us to consider, “(…) what stories are told about design problems, solutions, contexts, and outcomes? Who gets to tell these stories? Who participates, who benefits, and who is harmed?” (Costanza-Chock 2020 p. 134)

Key Dates

Abstract registration deadline: March 17, 2023, 11:59pm AOE
Paper submission deadline: March 31, 2023, 11:59pm AOE
Paper reviews available: April 28, 2023
Camera ready deadline: May 19, 2023
LIMITS Workshop: June 14-15, 2023

In 2023, LIMITS will be a virtual, distributed workshop. We welcome participants to organize local gatherings or “LIMITS-hubs” that encourage community-building and sharing of infrastructure.

Reach out to Elina (elina(at)kth.se) if interested. I will be there.

The Arduous Road to Revolution. Resisting Authoritarian Regimes in The Digital Communication Age

I have just read The Arduous Road to Revolution. Resisting Authoritarian Regimes in The Digital Communication Age, the latest book from Gabriele Giacomini. The book  offers an analysis of the influence of ICT use during revolutions (based on revolutions against regimes in Myanmar, Ukraine, Iran, Egypt, Hong Kong and Belarus), and goes on to raise a series of questions about which skills, rules and institutions might be useful to a population that finds its freedom under pressure, and to offer several suggestions.

In the early 21st century academic theorists  about internet development believed that it would bring improvement for democratic processes, offering benefits for bottom-up citizen participation in democratic processes and the resulting empowerment of the population. This view was constructed within a liberal democratic context and framework though, and overlooked questions of how internet and digital technology might become a player within an authoritarian context, which turns out to be quite different.

The author describes the history of the codification of human rights and the philosophy behind the idea that a population has a right to overthrow a government that doesn’t uphold them, before discussing some of the elements that have to be in place for anger to tip over into revolution.

He then goes on to describe the role of digital media in authoritarian restorations under the title The Decline of Revolutions, and offers descriptions of ICT use in the uprisings named above both by the population and the resisting government.

Each example has interesting specifics: the Ukraine experience led to authoritarian regimes realizing the importance of controlling digital media; the Iranian experience to the adoption of technological policies to counteract rebellion, a development also visible in Egypt and the revolutions that followed. Hong Kong and Belarus are viewed as advanced digital societies and the analysis brings in the technological development of exchanging messages while offline (via Bluetooth) and the doxing approach adopted (first) by protesters (described as forms of revolutionary innovation) and the respondent technology-enhanced government repression.

This type of conflict leads to a spiral of digital sophistication (my ICT use is more efficient and bigger and better than yours), and the author makes a case for regulatory prevention, the challenge being to identify the conditions to counter authoritarian drifts in digital societies: to identify control mechanisms, counterweights, and to allow citizens to act before the spiral (described above) starts.

The book comes to a climax with ideas of how to counter authoritarian drifts in digital societies. What is needed (according to Giacomini) is a political architecture that can foster the promotion of the emancipatory elements of digital media, requiring a modern up-to-date human rights system capable of protecting freedom in handling the cognitive elements conveyed by technologies: words, symbols, images, video, data and news.

A thorough description follows of what this might actually mean, rights to freedom, access, anonymity and to be forgotten just a few of those discussed both in terms of application and reinterpretation. The author also makes the point that being free from oppression is not the same as being free to monitor, criticize and denounce, debate and gather.

Should the international community intervene? Should there be regulation? How can we work towards the separation of digital power and strengthening of pluralism at national level. Digital literacy is also a tool for resistance, knowledge of anonymous browsing techniques, avoiding trojans, encryption and even password choice all playing a part in enabling the user to inhibit the influence of power.

This is an easy to read, thought provoking, well researched and informative book that weaves an argument within a grey area sitting between the virtual and physical world. It is not only about digital communication, but also about power and democracy, responsibility, innovation and politics.

The Arduous Road to Revolution. Resisting Authoritarian Regimes in the Digital Communication Age by Gabriele Giacomini is published by Mimesis International and costs €11.