Salvage Computing
Building with what has already been made.
Utilizing only already available computational resources, to be limited by that which is already produced.
That’s the permacomputing wiki’s definition, and the constraint is doing all the work. Not “buy the efficient one.” Buy nothing. There are millions of working machines already out here, and the question I find interesting is what can still be done with them. It’s a purist position, and one I hold firmly right up until something breaks that I can’t fix.
People hear this and reach for retrocomputing, which isn’t quite it. Retrocomputing looks after the past: machines kept running, period-correct software, emulators careful enough to get the timing right. Salvage computing is about right now. Rowan is a ThinkPad X280 I bought half-broken off eBay and repaired, and it’s the machine I did today’s work on.
What makes that possible is that the hardware never stopped being good enough. Writing didn’t get heavier. Software gets slower faster than hardware gets faster, which is Wirth’s law, and which I quote more often than anyone should quote an aphorism that happens to agree with him.
In Practice
It comes down to what I buy, what I put on the machine, and what I write for it.
- Buy it broken and fix it. Rowan came off eBay half-working. So did the netbooks.
- Run something that still supports the machine. Debian where it fits, antiX where Debian has dropped the architecture out from under the hardware.
- Write software that fits. Owl targets 32-bit netbooks first, on the theory that the constraint improves the program. I would say that, obviously.
Then there’s retr0bright, which is the cosmetic half, and which I’d defend on the grounds that a machine you’re embarrassed to open is a machine you don’t use. Though I would also just like them to look nice.
Bookmarks
- Permacomputing — the larger set of ideas the definition above belongs to.
- Lifespan maximization — the design half of this, about building things that last rather than rescuing things that didn’t.
- Right to repair — the part that’s a legal fight instead of a hobby.
- Wirth’s law — the aphorism I lean on above, with more behind it than I gave it.