Permacomputing

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Computing to support life on Earth

Computing in the age of climate crisis is often wasteful and adds nothing useful to our real life communities. Here we try to find out how to change that.

Definition and purpose of permacomputing: http://viznut.fi/files/texts-en/permacomputing.html

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Solarpunk ethical work within IT? (slrpnk.net)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Looking for perspectives about the above. On my meanderings around the web I've found cybersecurity is all the rage now, cybersecurity experts are desperately needed. Looks a bit like a protection scheme to me - first have everyone save their data in the cloud and buy a smart fridge, then flood everything with ethical hacking courses and cybersecurity certifications.

Reminds me of my marketing translation days working on copy where you always were supposed to outpace your competitors by using some [insert software here]-as-a-service solution to 'compete in an increasingly fast-paced business environment'. Yay rat race.

On the other hand, as to cybersecurity experts, we will need smart people who can re-stupidify our smart appliances when they go rogue.

What would you consider ethical work within IT? Now and in a brighter future?

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Smart fridges are one thing but there are many innocent folk relying on internet services to do normal and important things involving sensitive data - talk to family and friends, access healthcare, attend work, do their banking, school and childcare enrolments, even insurance. Should these things be replaced by rooms full of filing cabinets? Maybe, I dunno, that's a big call. Short of substantial collapse that renders the internet unavailable, these sort of things will continue to be online and ordinary people deserve all the security they can get. If you're working in cybersecurity to help people like this, then that is totally ethical in my view.

If you're lucky maybe you can land a role with some direct permacomputing aspects - reduce hardware requirements, simplification of systems, maintaining old hardware to maximise lifespan. But just avoiding roles where you or your organisation is encouraging people to view more ads or buy more stuff would be a good start.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

rooms full of filing cabinets

These used to work great only a few decades ago - even a few years ago in my native country. And some of the people working in them were actually really friendly and helpful, even in non-standard cases. They just added another paper to the physical file, add a stamp, there it's official! But I've also met unhelpful and biased people, as we probably all have at some point. Now I am using mostly online and digital services. It has been captcha hell recently (probably because of the legacy applications @[email protected] mentioned in another comment. I think they used this country as an alpha version test country for all sorts of online government services and some of the stuff is very dated. It's actually great when it works, no running or waiting around with physical documents.

I think both systems can work and can be good. After careful rethinking I would wager a guess that in the computing version (developing and maintaining well functioning and safe public service websites) we end up operating more sustainably because everybody can handle their stuff remotely. Although I don't know enough about communication infrastructure vs a well run public transport system/walkable town setup to really be sure.