This document has silly pronouncements like "General-purpose communication platforms would not have entertainment as a design priority". Sorry but Netflix is more than 25% of the entire internet and when you add all the streaming video guys together it is probably half the entire internet, and over time, will likely grow to 75%. If the internet had been designed with entertainment in mind, it would have been a lot more efficient to push video around. They didn't think about it much, and as a result we have a very wasteful system. Of course our communication systems should have as a design priority entertainment, because that is what people are using them for. And it's none of our business to tell people what to do with their time. That is their free choice, and TikTok is evidently the answer for kids below 12 who are on that service for 80 minutes a day average. The energy expended on stupid bitcoin proof of work is the biggest waste of energy on the planet, and just getting rid of that ridiculous thing would help. Proving your worthiness by wasting energy computing nonsense values has to be the dumbest thing ever to catch on in a big way. Later generations will wonder what we were thinking. It was already more energy than all of Ireland 2 years ago, who knows what it is now. Also, if we could crack the dumb monopoly that Google and the other browser companies have on only allowing JS in the browser, and let us use more efficient technologies, we could compile ahead of time our code, and not download massive tens of gigabytes to do a signon screen, that takes 100MB of RAM to run. I can think of gigantic puddles of inefficiency in our current systems that should be addressed. We all should tread lightly on the earth, and leave it in a better condition than when we started. Computing is saving physical movement to a massive degree, but we can be a lot better.

"Sorry but Netflix is more than 25% of the entire internet and when you add all the streaming video guys together it is probably half the entire internet, and over time, will likely grow to 75%" I think this hints towards timewellspent by tristan Harris - https://humanetech.com/

Thank you for sharing, Andreas! Very interesting read and way of seeing things. In particular:

Programmability is the core of computing and the essence of computer literacy. Therefore, users must not be deliberately distanced from it. Instead, computer systems and user cultures should make programming as relevant, useful and accessible as possible.

I agree that if the users are not distanced from programming, they can have an impact on the efficiency, because they won't be forced to use huge complex programs for simple needs.

@Edward de Jong / Beads Project FYI work is being done on sending JS VM bytecode to the browser, and to make it streamable.

@curious_reader Thanks for sharing, this is an interesting perspective on computing and technology in general. There are many similar domains where we see both yin and yang approaches (to borrow the author's labels which as a Tai-Chi practitioner I find very appropriate) with the yang approach being currently dominant. There's breeding vs. GMOs, herbalism vs. chemical pharmacology, bicyles vs. motorized vehicles, and of course the author's permaculture vs industrial agriculture. Ivan Illich's "Tools for conviviality", which has been discussed here before, also argues for yin technologies.

I won't repeat past rants here, just point out that going anywhere near this vision requires as a prerequisite the willingness to move away from the herd a bit. To make thoughtful choices about what to fork so you're not at the mercy of where the world decides to go. Even if that means becoming more self-sufficient about managing incoming patches, deciding what to include for yourself, and so on.

a software program is much easier to (re)create from scratch than a garden.

Only if you don't implicitly assume that you have to get permission from the mainstream to recreate it.

That holds more generally: minimally invasive yin technologies differ completely from yang technologies that have roughly the same purpose, down to the foundations. In the case of computing, even the hardware must be different.

hi @Konrad Hinsen "Ivan Illich's "Tools for conviviality, which has been discussed here before," can you point me to the discussions here on that topic , I would be interested in that. Thank you!

@curious_reader A search for "convival" on this Slack will show you the most recent discussions, including a few around the Convivial Computing Salon whose name was chosen as a reference to Illich's book. Unfortunately the Slack archive doesn't go back very far. I have vague memories of someone having set up a more durable archive on GitHub, but I can't find the link, sorry!

Thank you @Konrad Hinsen for introducing me to Ivan Illich ! Now I have some things to read...