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Permacomputing Education
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This is a library of resources to learn about permacomputing, its practices, and how to contribute to the permacomputing ecosystem.
Collection
Updated 1mo
This is a library of resources to learn about permacomputing, its practices, and how to contribute to the permacomputing ecosystem.
Retrocomputing as a Model for Sustainable and Cognitive Computing: Lessons from Low-Resource Systems
This paper argues that retrocomputing constitutes a conceptually productive model for rethinking sustainability in contemporary computing. Early computing systems operated under strict hardware constraints, necessitating efficiency, clarity, and minimalism in both software and interaction design. In contrast, contemporary systems are frequently characterised by computational excess, software bloat, and attention-fragmenting interfaces. Drawing on examples from early home computing and command-line environments, this paper analyses how low-resource systems make visible forms of computational minimalism with relevance to present-day design challenges. A central theoretical contribution is the distinction between interface-level and system-structure-level design analysis, which demonstrates that cognitive effects arise not only from visual and interactional surface features but from deeper computational organisation. The discussion integrates perspectives from human-computer interaction and cognitive science, particularly in relation to attention, cognitive load, and user experience. The paper adopts a conceptual and exploratory approach grounded in systematic literature review, aiming to identify design-relevant patterns rather than to provide empirical validation. It introduces the concepts of computational minimalism and cognitive sustainability as complementary analytical frameworks, and derives five principles for sustainable system design. Crucially, the paper also address
What might degrowth computing look like?
The past few years have seen various attempts within computing, programming and hacker communities to apply ‘degrowth’ principles to their work – i.e. sketching out ways to de-couple digital techno…
Low Fat Computing
Low Fat Computing is an essay by Jeff Fox about computers with minimal hardware and software.
The Staggering Ecological Impacts of Computation and the Cloud
Anthropologist Steven Gonzalez Monserrate draws on five years of research and ethnographic fieldwork in server farms to illustrate some of the diverse environmental impacts of data storage.
The Art of Unix Programming
This book and its on-line version are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 1.0 license, with the additional proviso that the right to publish it on paper for sale or other for-profit use is reserved to Pearson Education, Inc. A reference copy of this license may be found at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/1.0/legalcode.
It's Not Easy Being Green: On the Energy Efficiency of Programming Languages
Does the choice of programming language affect energy consumption? Previous highly visible studies have established associations between certain programming languages and energy consumption. A causal misinterpretation of this work has led academics and industry leaders to use or support certain languages based on their claimed impact on energy consumption. This paper tackles this causal question directly: it develops a detailed causal model capturing the complex relationship between programming language choice and energy consumption. This model identifies and incorporates several critical but previously overlooked factors that affect energy usage. These factors, such as distinguishing programming languages from their implementations, the impact of the application implementations themselves, the number of active cores, and memory activity, can significantly skew energy consumption measurements if not accounted for. We show -- via empirical experiments, improved methodology, and careful examination of anomalies -- that when these factors are controlled for, notable discrepancies in prior work vanish. Our analysis suggests that the choice of programming language implementation has no significant impact on energy consumption beyond execution time.
The biggest lie tech people tell themselves — and the rest of us
They see facial recognition, smart diapers, and surveillance devices as inevitable evolutions. They’re not.
Redefining our needs: Permacomputing and Vernacular computing
How to ensure an increasing focus on sustainability in computing?
The Beauty of Finished Software
Let me introduce you to WordStar 4.0, a popular word processor from the early 80s.
The Oceanic provenance of Permacomputing and Computational poetics
Heritage Frontiers in Computational Art: The Oceanic provenance of Permacomputing and Computational poetics (2024) Nancy Mauro-Flude Keywords heritage algorithms, Oceana, codework, future heritage, technē, digital decolonisation, sandboxing, in-formal cultural economies, philosophy of technology, critical media theory. Citation: Mauro-Flude, N. (2024). Heritage Frontiers in Computational Art: The Oceanic Provenance of Permacomputing and Computational Poetics. Originally presented at ISEA, the updated version is available at Autoluminescence Institute. Initially presented June 26, 2024 at [ISEA2024](https://expertevents.
Origin Stories: Plantations, Computers, and Industrial Control
The proto-Taylorist methods of worker control Charles Babbage encoded into his calculating engines have origins in plantation management.
greenwashing
Greenwashing refers to false claims that a product or activity is environmentally friendly, especially when the claims are made by corporate PR and marketing divisions. Unintentional greenwashing may take place when an unjustified belief of environmental friendliness is actively maintained by well-intended people.
THE CALIFORNIAN IDEOLOGY by Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron | Imaginary Futures
“Not to lie about the future is impossible and one can lie about it at will” – Naum Gabo [1]
Californian ideology
Californian ideology refers to the dominant ideology of Silicon Valley, as described by the British media theorists Barbrook and Cameron in their 1995 essay "The Californian Ideology". The ideology is very influential because of the ubiquity of Californian technology products, as well as because siliconization has made it prominent in computing industries all around the world.
Femke Snelting – creating commons
Originally published in German as Feminist Server – Sichtbarkeit und Funktionalität. Digitale Infrastruktur als gemeinschaftliches Projekt, in Springerin 4/2019.
History of Anarchaserver and Feminists Servers visit this section - Anarchaserver
Trigger Warning: This text and the accompanying images contain references to medical violence, slavery, and non-consensual experimentation. Reader discretion is advised.
pseudosimplicity
In mainstream computing, ease of use is usually implemented as superficial simplicity or pseudosimplicity, as an additional layer of complexity that hides the underlying layers. Meanwhile, systems that are actually very simple and elegant are often presented in ways that make them look complex to laypeople.
bloat
Bloat refers to something wastefully and unnecessarily large. In software, it may refer to the presence of program code that is perceived as unnecessarily long, slow, or otherwise wasteful of resources, but a considerable amount of bloat originates from external dependencies.
cryptocurrency
Cryptocurrency is a form of decentralized digital currency that uses strong cryptography for security and verification.