Today is Seize The Means of Production Day #comrades.
So let's talk about what that means, in today's high-tech, distributed world.
From my home, I can produce: Books (but not paper, or ink), Music (but not instruments), Movies (but not the media on which to distribute them), various plastic bits and baubles (but not the plastic itself), applications/games/programs (but not the machines that they run on.)
I am a producer, but in order to produce, I am also a consumer of raw and semi-raw materials.
Often, I can recycle those raw materials (I pick up used instruments and audio gear, I repair old computers) or I will soon be able to do so (I want to get a grinder and an extruder for turning failed prints in to new filament, for example.)
We live in an age of abundance. There are millions of blank CDs and DVDs out there. We could stop making them for a while, and be okay with the overstock.
But eventually, the Overstock won't be enough.
We need to be able to make CD-Rs in our basements. We need community owned CPU factories.
The Raspberry Pi enables me to make All Kinds! Of Neat Things! but it depends on an international shipping infrastructure and the goodwill of several corporations.
We need a community made pi. We need a #comrade64
But see, even that leaves out the fact that current computer chips come out of a massive industry of mining and manufacturing.
There is so much money changing hands. And so many precious and valuable resources that we are running out of. And the human cost is enormous. Even if we manage to get a community/public owned chip foundry, we're left relying on and exploiting the existing capitalist infrastructure for collecting raw materials. (Think of the human cost.)
And we've made So Many of these things already. How many of you have more CPUs than people in your home? (Most of you, if not all of you.)
I have my laptop, two tablets, my phone, my server, my projector, my TV, my gameboy, the router, my microwave, and even my coffee maker has a CPU in it, etc.
Not to mention the dozens of discarded machines I've adopted. The Pentium 4, with it's 4GB of ram that only gets booted when I need to test something on Windows XP.
We throw away cell phones all the time. I probably have four or five that are 5-7 years old.
Old android devices that are hardly good for anything anymore, just gathering dust in a drawer.
And Cellphone recycling? It's a joke. So much human labor, so many places for people to get hurt, or to get it wrong.
The Social revolution will require CPUs. Will require computers. Will require technology. But we're going to have to find new ways to do those things. (And that won't be easy!)
A lot of tech problems could be solved if there was a requirement for companies to either ship devices with open bootloaders, or open the bootloaders of their devices after a specific amount time.
We should be able to open up our devices, and change them to our specifications.
Is there a good reason my old android phones aren't already running a custom, mesh networked, web server OS, and seeking out other devices with same to form a community internet alternative?
Okay, moving on from the Tech for a bit.
Clothes! There are places in Georgia where you can find Cotton growing wild. It's a pain (literally) to pick, and it's a pain to process, and it's a pain to manufacture.
The only reason our clothes today are cheap is because we are supporting factories in Asia or Africa or wherever that are viciously exploiting their workers.
For most of us, the clothes we wear are a symptom of human suffering.
I can sew a shirt, or a pair of paints. (I've done it a bunch, for stage productions.) I can screen print designs on clothes, or use dyes on fabrics.
What I can't do is turn plants in to threads in to fabrics.
Can you? Can anyone you know?
My great grandmother probably knew how, but I doubt she had done it since she was very small.
The point that I'm building to, I guess, is that we've put ourselves in a position where we have abundance. We're constantly manufacturing far more than we're consuming.
Many of us are also, as individuals or small groups, manufacturers of goods.
If we want to talk about seizing the means of production, we have to talk about manufacturing the difficult stuff, and about the global impact of our manufacturing.
We have to talk about sourcing raw materials. We have to talk about exploitation.
Some of the answers will come from technological innovation, but that technological innovation needs to come from an intentional and thoughtful place.
We have to make an effort to make the world a less horrible place.
@ajroach42 I've actually been trying to find courses on this.
Where I live people cut the fruit of bananas from the stalks and just discard the stalks, despite the fact that they're a great source of fiber. I've been trying to locate a machine to extract the fiber, but none of the sellers has responded to requests for information so far.
Odd how people in developed nations are so spoiled as to not realize where their clothes, or food, for that matter, comes from.
@ajroach42 Alternatively, what're the options fo DIY / build it yorself mibile or portable systems?
There is literally nothing in the market as appeals to me.
@ajroach42 Raspberry Pi does seem to be the go-to right now.
Arduino and Sokris (recently departed) as well.
I guess you mean only Soekris has stopped production, not Arduino (gave me a bit of a fright there, I'm aware of the in fighting about Arduino IP but didn't think they'd quit completely!)
A shame though that market forces/lack of skills/resources have once again done for what was a decent European electronics supplier; even if the equipment was a slightly higher price..
@ajroach42 @vfrmedia Soekris has:
April 24, 2017
Due to declining sales, limited resources available to design new products, and increased competition from Asia, Soekris Engineering, Inc. has suspended operations in the USA as of today.
They're not a RaPi maker, but were a maker of small, but highly capable, systems, largely server-type stuff, but still.
The thing is, if those old devices can be collected and sent to other countries, preferably refurbished, they can be used for their originally intended purpose.
They can probably still be used by people without phones for things like email, websurfing, reading and playing games. Maybe they could be donated to a homeless shelter or something? Could enable people looking for work to communicate via WiFi (for instance).
I'm sure the components can be used for more.
@vfrmedia There's no reason the people can't have microscopes and robots.
We just need to be able to get to that point.
Computers today are smaller and faster than they have ever been (this has been true every year for as long as there have been computers) but to what end?
What would it hurt if we made them a little bulkier? Or even a little slower?
@ajroach42 I'm aware of FOSS hardware makers in Australia working directly with their Chinese counterparts for more ethical hardware production (and indeed young Chinese who have entire electronics factories, robots and all, in their shared housing!)
It would not hurt at all if some computers were bulkier/slower especially such things as embedded systems dedicated for a single task, that are not required to go online directly and/or harvest data for marketers..
@vfrmedia See, that's super neat.
I want to see more of that.
I should spend some time poking around the FOSS hardware scene.
@ajroach42 unfortunately much is only discussed in Chinese (which alas I do not understand) and folk making many cool gadgets are also stuck behind Great Firewall and worried about Western copyright issues, but this Asian American chap explains a lot of the culture in his blog (these are much smaller scale factories than Foxconn etc).
https://www.bunniestudios.com/
For more "Western" projects (that you might want to start with) look at Sparkfun, Arduino etc..
@vfrmedia I'm pretty familiar with sparkfun, arduino, and adafruit. If I have components, I can make interesting hardware.
The question becomes: where do I get the components?
@vfrmedia I think maybe my point is becoming confused.
I can assemble an arduino, a recycled Nokia screen, and some switches in to a useful device.
I could make the switches myself, if I wanted. I don't think I could make the Nokia screen, but they are easy enough to find right now, and not hard to recycle.
Heck, even resistors and capacitors and what have you can be made by hand, with enough patience.
But I couldn't manufacture an arduino.
@vfrmedia I can't make flash memory, I can't make LCD screens, I can't make RAM.
Outside of huge factories, no one can.
I'm trying to figure out what, if any, of those components could be manufactured in a garage, or recycled out of existing components. Eventually this is going to matter.
@ajroach42 components from computers made up to mid 1990s are probably recyclable although recovering and reusing SMD components really is a challenge (although something CN manages)
Another factor is that very few of the semiconductors are made in USA or Europe any more (so skills how to make them are dwindling if not lost altogether)
@vfrmedia I guess, if we're going that route, what we need are modern motherboards (with access to USB, etc), and modern software for older x86 processors.
A 486 with 512mb RAM isn't going to be a 3D video rendering powerhouse, but if we could break it out of the rest of those ancient components, it could be a serviceable workstation.
@ajroach42 I remember seeing somewhere 386/486s [or a variant thereof] were used in many embedded systems, will have to look more closely at the online electronics suppliers..
To make these motherboards in Western nations we might even need to reimport the skills from Asia and teach them to younger folk!
@ajroach42 I see that. I think I jumped in early this morning without realizing, somehow, that it carried on. Possibly due to technical issues here.
It's funny--Lately I've been thinking about how I went for about 5 1/2 years without having a phone or owning a computer, part of the time living without electricity, running water, gas or even walls, doors or windows, which was wonderful. Rather isolated, though.
(It can be, absolutely -- but after a certain point those will run out, so some comrade64 will be a good test of that for those circumstances, and as sheer proof-of-concept anyway.)
You know, I don't think they'll run out for a very long time. Lots of people have hordes of stuff, some that's useless to them but still perfectly functional or, at least parts of those things are. There are many useful, usable treasures just sitting around collecting dust or rusting.
One could possibly even advertise for used stuff, simply offering to pick it up and take it off the hands of people who don't want it around.
@Euphoria @sydneyfalk the problem here is that old tech and new tech can't talk to one another without a lot of work, and that's assuming that the old tech hasn't been locked down in some unfortunate way.
I recycle old Nokia phones in to screens for new projects, but nearly every other part of the phone is useless because of software.
And, because people know how to reuse them, the demand for the old phones is high enough that sometimes it's cheaper for me to buy a new screen.
Recycling/upcycling is a great idea. We should do it as often as possible. It's just not always going to be possible.
Manufacturing is not the solution to every problem, but it needs to be an option on the table.
@theoutrider Maybe you and I are confusing what "Community" means in this case.
When I say "Community Owned" I mean a place is owned by the people who work in it, and the people who have a stake in what it does.
You're saying, I think, that it should instead be controlled b a central governmental body?
The end result is the same. People own the factory, or people own the government that owns the factory.
But even that's not really enough in this case. (more soon.)
@theoutrider Just the foundry would be a massive undertaking, yeah. But that doesn't even account for all the other resources that need to be understood and managed, you know?
Where do we get our silicon? Our gold? There are a lot of problems with manufacturing tech beyond just the expense.
Andrew Roach ✅
combatmonk
:two_hearts:Euphoria
Dr. Edward Morbius ❌
Alex@rtnVFRmedia Suffolk UK
dmj
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smol Florian 🍑