Less
----
Last week* I stumbled across a youtube recording of an invigorating
talk by 100 Rabbits' Devine Lu Linvega from last September's Strange
Loop conference. Some of the themes Devine touched on resonated so
strongly with me that I felt compelled to write something - anything -
here in response. Many of the themes relate somehow to computation
and programming, topics which are near and dear to my heart, but I
think they can be applied more broadly.
I'm not a good enough writer to properly put everything into words
without a huge amount of effort, so I'm going to limit myself to the
following few bullet points. There's a lot more to the actual talk, by
the way, so I'd encourage you to take the time to listen to that in
full if you have the chance. These are just a handful of thoughts
which came to me while watching, and more-than-likely completely
misrepresent Devine's intent. These are just some of the patterns his
words left in my brain.
Firstly, there's a point early on where Levine shows a drawing of
somebody sitting on a couch and being told by their TV to say,
"McDonald's", presumably in order to return to watching some show.
This is quickly crossed out, and Levine uses this to state that he's
not interested in "apps" or "services" or "consumers". This was a
very tiny thing, probably included more as an indication of talk
content rather than a political statement, but I loved this so
much. I'm adamantly opposed to the application of the producer/consumer
categorisation to people, particularly with respect to programming (I
recently wrote about this [2]). I believe that words like "consumer"
and "intellectual property" poison our brains. They presuppose the
existence of the unhelpful ideas they describe. By using these words
we implicitly validate these concepts, making them real.
One of the main themes of the talk is sustainable computing in the
face of fairly severe resource limitations. Although as Devine points
out, the word "sustainable" is so frequently used that it's difficult
to know what someone means when they say it. The focus here is on
computing in such a way that the computing practice itself can be
sustained in spite of the rapid turnover of "platforms du jour" and
without requiring practitioners to continue on the wasteful treadmill
of endless hardware upgrades. I hugely respect this goal, and I love
how essential this is to 100 Rabbits in particular, living how they
live and doing what they do. More than that, I love how unashamedly
Devine professes his love for the "relentless fascination of the
computer", and refuses to acknowledge any essential conflict between
using computers and living "sustainably". (There's that word again.)
Finally, and this is where I'm really departing from Devine's spoken
message, it seems to me that 100 Rabbits are - intentionally or not -
exploring the concept of being happy with less as a discipline for
achieving more happiness overall. Not just in computing, but in
general. Now, although I don't live off the grid or on a boat, this
is one of my own motivations. The ongoing challenge of learning to be
happy with less excites me tremendously. But why? Am I scared of
losing something? (I've written before [3] about "burrowing down" as a
way of retaining control of my environment.) Is being happy with
nothing the ultimate goal? This sounds very meaningful and wise, but
I don't think it's right. Maybe I just sense that, for me and my
peculiar interests, this is possible and hence desirable?
Pff. I really do waffle on. Sorry! Go watch Devine's talk.
---
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3u7bGgVspM
[2]: gopher://thelambdalab.xyz/0phlog/2023-08-26-Program-your-computer.txt
[3]: gopher://thelambdalab.xyz/0phlog/2022-11-10-Re:-wayland-or-tmux.txt
*Not last week: it's taken me months to get around to finishing this.
So much for my #phloggersgarage phlogging challenge! :(
gemini://thelambdalab.xyz/phlog/2024-04-04-Less.txt