19
Solarpunk ethical work within IT?
(slrpnk.net)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2024
19 points (88.0% liked)
Permacomputing
657 readers
2 users here now
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
XMPP chat: https://movim.slrpnk.net/chat/lowtech%40chat.disroot.org/room
Sister community over at lemmy.sdf.org: !permacomputing@lemmy.sdf.org
There's also a wiki: https://permacomputing.net/
Website: http://wiki.xxiivv.com/site/permacomputing.html
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
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.
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 @Dave@lemmy.nz 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.