Review & summaries of various current developments under the umbrella term “permacomputing”

Review & summaries of various current developments under the umbrella term “permacomputing”

Research on computing within limits explores the design of computing technologies that will be appropriate for a future where availability of resources is drastically reduced. In an effort to define the scope and goals of limits-aware computing, early papers discussed how such a future may come about, what challenges this future may present, and the kinds of technologies we should design given these scenarios. In this paper, we posit that these future challenges already exist today in their incipient forms. We propose that limits-aware computing research should focus on these problems to make a difference today while preparing for further future collapse.

In a setting of economic and infrastructural collapse, the inability to manufacture and maintain computing resources will be an enormous limitation on the continued use of technology. The concept of “rot” exists for both hardware and software, referring to a slow loss of functionality over time. Given a desire to maintain technological capability, we raise a variety of questions about technology use in such a scenario. How long will current hardware last through repair, robust construction, and good maintenance practices? What would software development and maintenance entail without today’s Internet infrastructure? What can be done to keep our software stable and usable for as long as possible in the face of viruses, storage degradation, and other threats?

What ideological, social and biophysical factors have precipitated the current environmental crises? What leverage is available for transformative practices and imaginaries to overcome the continuous growth of our energy consumption? The Post Growth Toolkit invites us to challenge the dominant narratives about growth and progress, and re-envision social metabolism through an understanding of the energy it requires, reconnecting human survival with the living, material qualities of the biosphere, drawing on ecofeminism, indigenous knowledge, environmental accounting and historical materialism.