Less ---- 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. --- [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! :(