Less

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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.

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[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! :(