Brilliant article, Mark. I really like the direction of this. I've been playing with a concept I call slow-tech as opposed to low-tech. It doesn't require or provide 24/7 connectivity and maybe is completely non-commercial. It's hard-wired, maybe only with neighborhood hubs. Once a day, people may see who's responded or write/ read other posts. But the rest of the time, we're with the real people in our lives.
In everything, I see the resistance happening by communities taking back their power. I think about how Julian Assange was able to get around the censorship because little Iceland was a safe haven for internet freedom. If there's even one community that's publishing the truth, it makes it accessible to everyone.
I also think that taking back something as slow-tech as local radio, networked into independent producers everywhere, could be community-building.
You've given me a lot of food for thought, and it sounds like you'll be continuing to. Thanks for abetting my practical, post-apocalyptic dreaming!
"It doesn't require or provide 24/7 connectivity and maybe is completely non-commercial. It's hard-wired, maybe only with neighborhood hubs. Once a day, people may see who's responded or write/ read other posts."
This is a pretty interesting preposition, and I think it dovetails with a certain product/technique I had in mind regarding lower availability windows leading to more focused, efficient and secure transactions.
Oh, you taking my idea seriously Mark, is goading me to explain more ;-) And I don't know if you noticed the Doc with similar thoughts today.
My book is about commonwealths of less than 300K people having the only right to issue or control the credit that's backed by the properties in their territory. That gives ownership of our labor with banking as a function of the commonwealth. Networks can replace centralization with open source tech for locally owned co-ops replacing Nextdoor, AirBnB, Lyft, Uber, Turo. Any improvement one community makes is available for anyone to adopt. But the currency backed by the mortgages and rents is specific to that locale, so it can't be extracted in any volume without triggering alerts.
My plan makes it possible for people to get outside doing real work a whole lot more, and interact with each other with a common experience. Much much more, but I'm so glad you're thinking technically along the same lines!
Excellent post, Mark. I'll be following this series with great interest.
Are you by any chance familiar with the work of John Michael Greer? He has long advocated for a low-tech (or slow-tech as per Tereza's comment) approach to technology.
From the moment the Internet of Things/Smart [Anything] concept began gaining traction I was immediately suspicious. Recent events have only solidified, nay, confirmed my suspicions about where all of this stuff is taking us. Nowhere good indeed.
Important, thought out, and well-written to boot. Great stuff. FWIW if this ever moves into a practical realm, I've been a C++ programmer for a long time and a professional firmware engineer for coming up on two years now, and would love to contribute whatever I could.
As an aside, I remember really enjoying "Rogue One", although I suppose anything looks good when you put it against "The Force Awakens" or especially "The Last Jedi" (:
Thanks for the offer, Nate. Let's see how the theoretical portion goes (and I'm looking forward to your contributions there as well, both here and on Deimos). Even thought experiments without direct implementations can be useful. If and when it comes to the grind, I'll be happy to make my own (fairly mediocre) contributions on the software front.
One of the directions I'm thinking in entails far more of a hardware problem. In fact, I think that's the thornier one, given the current state of the global manufacturing/supply chain. Some of the theoretical products I have in mind require minimal (if any) programming efforts, and are more in the category of repurposing laboratory tools.
Meanwhile, we'll have to agree to disagree on Rogue One: A Star Wars Borefest. But I guess that's the least of our concerns at the moment. ;-)
I concur that this field of endeavors should and must be part of our future plans going forward. Others are thinking along these lines, and that’s an encouraging trend. Just in the last week I came across someone who developed an open source cell phone which fits very neatly into your outline:
Brilliant article, Mark. I really like the direction of this. I've been playing with a concept I call slow-tech as opposed to low-tech. It doesn't require or provide 24/7 connectivity and maybe is completely non-commercial. It's hard-wired, maybe only with neighborhood hubs. Once a day, people may see who's responded or write/ read other posts. But the rest of the time, we're with the real people in our lives.
In everything, I see the resistance happening by communities taking back their power. I think about how Julian Assange was able to get around the censorship because little Iceland was a safe haven for internet freedom. If there's even one community that's publishing the truth, it makes it accessible to everyone.
I also think that taking back something as slow-tech as local radio, networked into independent producers everywhere, could be community-building.
You've given me a lot of food for thought, and it sounds like you'll be continuing to. Thanks for abetting my practical, post-apocalyptic dreaming!
Thanks, Tereza.
"It doesn't require or provide 24/7 connectivity and maybe is completely non-commercial. It's hard-wired, maybe only with neighborhood hubs. Once a day, people may see who's responded or write/ read other posts."
This is a pretty interesting preposition, and I think it dovetails with a certain product/technique I had in mind regarding lower availability windows leading to more focused, efficient and secure transactions.
Oh, you taking my idea seriously Mark, is goading me to explain more ;-) And I don't know if you noticed the Doc with similar thoughts today.
My book is about commonwealths of less than 300K people having the only right to issue or control the credit that's backed by the properties in their territory. That gives ownership of our labor with banking as a function of the commonwealth. Networks can replace centralization with open source tech for locally owned co-ops replacing Nextdoor, AirBnB, Lyft, Uber, Turo. Any improvement one community makes is available for anyone to adopt. But the currency backed by the mortgages and rents is specific to that locale, so it can't be extracted in any volume without triggering alerts.
My plan makes it possible for people to get outside doing real work a whole lot more, and interact with each other with a common experience. Much much more, but I'm so glad you're thinking technically along the same lines!
This is really not my area of expertise, but I certainly have long imagined the utility of a word processor and printer that cannot connect to wifi.
Excellent post, Mark. I'll be following this series with great interest.
Are you by any chance familiar with the work of John Michael Greer? He has long advocated for a low-tech (or slow-tech as per Tereza's comment) approach to technology.
From the moment the Internet of Things/Smart [Anything] concept began gaining traction I was immediately suspicious. Recent events have only solidified, nay, confirmed my suspicions about where all of this stuff is taking us. Nowhere good indeed.
Thanks, Alex. I will familiarize myself with John Michael Greer and get back to you. But I'm glad we all seem to be on much the same page.
Important, thought out, and well-written to boot. Great stuff. FWIW if this ever moves into a practical realm, I've been a C++ programmer for a long time and a professional firmware engineer for coming up on two years now, and would love to contribute whatever I could.
As an aside, I remember really enjoying "Rogue One", although I suppose anything looks good when you put it against "The Force Awakens" or especially "The Last Jedi" (:
Thanks for the offer, Nate. Let's see how the theoretical portion goes (and I'm looking forward to your contributions there as well, both here and on Deimos). Even thought experiments without direct implementations can be useful. If and when it comes to the grind, I'll be happy to make my own (fairly mediocre) contributions on the software front.
One of the directions I'm thinking in entails far more of a hardware problem. In fact, I think that's the thornier one, given the current state of the global manufacturing/supply chain. Some of the theoretical products I have in mind require minimal (if any) programming efforts, and are more in the category of repurposing laboratory tools.
Meanwhile, we'll have to agree to disagree on Rogue One: A Star Wars Borefest. But I guess that's the least of our concerns at the moment. ;-)
Consider the Precursor:
https://www.crowdsupply.com/sutajio-kosagi/precursor
A handheld computer designed from the ground up to have evidence-based trust (zero backdoors) and implement secure messaging.
That being said, it's expensive (since it's not really mass produced), and difficult to use (built by engineers, not UI designers).
I concur that this field of endeavors should and must be part of our future plans going forward. Others are thinking along these lines, and that’s an encouraging trend. Just in the last week I came across someone who developed an open source cell phone which fits very neatly into your outline:
https://skysedge.com/unsmartphones/RUSP/index.html
Someone shared it in the comments section of an article I read on substack. What a treasure trove the comments section can be!
Looking forward to seeing the ideas that have been percolating in your brain Mark. Kudos to you!
I really like this idea.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html.en#four-freedoms
To which I'd add...
https://www.repair.org/aboutus
These are certainly topics for discussion, yes.