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Posted by akkartik 4 days ago

Cyberdecks, going analog, and convivial technology(blog.hydroponictrash.solar)
122 points | 79 commentspage 2
jesse_dot_id 1 day ago|
I became an engineer because I'm lazy.
aaronbrethorst 1 day ago||
Forget the Ono-Sendai Cyberspace Seven, I'm still waiting for a Sandbenders.
goodboyjojo 1 day ago||
i've seen many people get into cyberdecks. stuff like this gets people feet wet for stem professions like engineering and programming.
thenthenthen 20 hours ago|
This! Its learning and a rite of passage, like with ‘guilds’ / the arts and crafts movements / craftsmanship described in the article (but not discussed as far as i can see). Sorry forgot the name for this thing… basically a master / apprentice project.
palmotea 1 day ago||
> Cyberdecks are changing for the better

> I say that cyberdecks are having another wave of resurgence because the interest in cyberdecks waxes and wanes, like everything in life, there is a cycle to the ideas coming into focus and out of focus, washing into the shore and washing back out to the sea of etheral thought.

> In my own view, cyberdecks have remained popular because of hacker culture. And all of the cultural norms wrapped up in hacker subcultures carries along with it. Specifically, the design of cyberdecks over the years has maintained a steady state of projects that maintain a military or scientific bend to them. They are afterall, influenced by science fiction about dystopian future societies that focus on war, dystopian corporate megacities, or interstellar travel.

AI or just terrible writing?

tsylba 14 hours ago|
The whole piece feel like vibe farming by some youngling piecing together part of the hacker culture as seen by the media in the 90s with some reddit or vintage tumblr trends on top. I resonated with a lot of themes it tries to capture but it ends up looking more like a teen trying to commodify a subculture in a performative way rather than a real tentative alternative to the system, as we saw every generation or so.

I'm all in for lowtech, degrowth, permacomputing, Bookchin municipalism and Illich like "tools for conviviality" but here it seems.. candid and non genuine.

everyone 21 hours ago||
Or just pick up any shithouse old laptop from a thrift store or wherever and put Linux Mint on it. Done.
mentalgear 22 hours ago||
Very compelling read on how common people cooperatives were always the only counterweight to the ruling class - and how the elites constantly tried to polarise the common people to take power from them.

> The Middle Ages, the Industrial Revolution, and our current Techno-Fudalist time are all connected. We still have lords (land lords, the bourgeoisie), we still have kings who enclose the commons (billionaires who enclosed the commons of the internet), who enforce violence with the hand of private armies of knights (the police and military), who demand that we provide for them while they subjugate us. Medieval Guilds & The Arts and Crafts movement

> Medieval guilds were created during feudal times as a challenge to the labor exploitation of the working class of the time. In some areas, guilds were organized by specific crafts. Metalsmithing, woodworking, and textiles are some examples. Guilds had specific guidelines on quality, and they created widespread quality control over the goods produced by the artisans in the guild. If a woodworker produced bad-quality furniture, their guild could basically force them to remake it to their quality standards.

> Guilds were basically worker cooperatives (in some cases) or could be thought of as trade-specific labor unions

globular-toast 1 day ago||
> Technology was supposed to connect us[...]

Was it? According to whom? The quoted phrase is pretty much a meme at this point, but I don't think it's true. This would suggest people in the 80s and 90s were sitting around feeling lonely and isolated, wishing they could be "more connected".

Technology has always been about one thing: giving people more freedom. Whether it's the ability to make coffee at home, or travel vast distances at great speeds whenever you want to, it's all about people being free from the constraints of relying on society (and the environment) for things.

It's all fundamentally counter to a cohesive society. It was never going to make us "more connected", quite the contrary. Asimov saw where this was going half a century ago. In his books the Solarians took technology to the extreme, allowing them to live alone on enormous estates affording them all the freedom in the world. But they were alone, communicating only remotely through screens. They didn't even have sex any more. Sound familiar?

When I read this as a teen it totally put me off "freedom" as the singular goal so many people treat it as. I didn't want to end up like that. I don't want to be alone. Life is about sharing and technology is never going to help with that, it's only going to make it worse, if we let it.

> This is apparent in the rise of "journal tok", where people on TikTok are posting about returning to written journals, planners, and sketchbooks.

Is this intended to be ironic? People will do anything for views on TikTok, including making videos about not using TikTok. If anyone does anything and puts it on TikTok, or other social media, I assume they're doing it for the views, not because they actually enjoy it. If you want to find someone who enjoys cooking, find someone who will cook and eat with you, don't look on TikTok. If you want to find someone who doesn't like TikTok, well, guess where you won't find them.

The rest of the article is filled with TikTok videos which I'm not going to watch.

Flingerthing 16 hours ago|
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