Permacomputing

2022

Editor's note: As a programmer, media artist and educator teaching and working with computation and digital media, the nascent community and thinking around permacomputing has helped frame my own thinking and response to the wasteful and consumption-oriented nature of digital electronics and computation. This interview by Counter-N with two early thinkers on the concept of permacomputation provides a strong introduction to the concept and related movements.

An introduction to the interrelated ideas and practices of permacomputing.

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Shintaro Miyazaki: So how would you describe or define permacomputing?

Marloes de Valk: The term was coined and described first by Ville Matias in 2020 on his website1 and has since started circulating, being connected to diverse practices. Currently it is collaboratively developed on the permacomputing wiki.2 I’m very interested in how the term’s meaning will develop now that people are adopting it. The term resonates with a lot of people, it captures something that is very much wished for, a counternarrative to the rapid “upgradeordie” cycle promoted by the tech industry. It is also somewhat paradoxical, linking an environmentally lightweight practice such as permaculture with one that is as resourceintensive as computing, which doesn’t only weigh heavy on the planet due to energy consumption, but also through unethical and damaging practices in several parts of the supply chain, from mining to manufacturing. Most energy is used during the production and spectacularly wasteful endoflife phase. This is unequally affecting the Global South. The term permacomputing hints at wanting to do better without being naive about this paradox.

Ville-Matias Heikkilä: Permacomputing asks the question whether we can rethink computing in the same way as permaculture rethinks agriculture. Is there even place for high technology (such as computing) in a world where human civilizations contribute to the wellbeing of the biosphere rather than destroy it? Permacomputing wants to imagine such a place and take steps towards it. It is therefore both utopian and practical. From today’s viewpoint it can indeed also feel paradoxical, because current mainstream computing is pretty much the type of technology that epitomizes industrial wastefulness and many other things that have gone wrong in society and technology.

Perma refers to permanence. A technology that depends on a wasteful use of finite resources can hardly be permanent. This is why a radical reduction of that wastefulness is a major concern to us: maximize the hardware lifespans, minimize the energy use. And this is not just about a set of technical problems to be fixed – the attitudes also need a radical turn. Small is beautiful, understandability is beautiful, ”virtual” is not immaterial, online time should be used wisely, not everything needs to be constantly available, doing things with less is not ”returning to the past.” For a more thorough explanation of the ideas, see my web articles on the topic (the 2020 original and the 2021 update).3

As for now, permacomputing is more like a set of interrelated ideas and practices than a coherent system of thought. Different people have different views on it. Also, many people have independently come up with similar ideas, so there’s a lot of overlap between permacomputing and concepts such as ”salvage computing,” ”frugal computing,” and ”degrowth computing.” Much of what comes out of the annual Computing within Limits workshops also has a lot of overlap with permacomputing. I think we should regard all these ideas as different aspects of the same thing, rather than as separate movements whose borders need to be unambiguously defined …

This publication is part of COUNTER-N, an online journal edited by Özgün Eylül İşcen and Shintaro Miyazaki. It is published electronically on the edoc-server of the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.

Title: Permacomputing
Authors: Marloes de Valk and Ville-Matias Heikkilä
Editors: Özgün Eylül İşcen, Shintaro Miyazaki
Graphic Design: Ahmet M. Öğüt

Published in 2022 by counter-n.net
DOI: doi.org/10.18452/25609

Final Submission: July 15th, 2022

This Publication is licensed under the CC-BY-SA 4.0 International.

To view a copy of this license, visit: http://creativecommons.org/licenses-by-sa-4.0