Culturally Situated Design Tools

Salvage Computing

Marloes de Valk
Version: 
1
Problem: 
Information and Communication Technology requires immense amounts of resources; metals, rare earth minerals, water, silicon and plastics as well as fossil fuels for their extraction, transport, production, use and disposal. The production and disposal of ICT hardware takes place, for the largest part, in countries with little environmental, health and safety regulations, polluting bodies, water, air and soils, for the largest part in the Global South. The resource use associated with ICTs is going to grow, since it is a rapidly growing industry that is currently selling the hardware and services required for the so-called 4th industrial revolution, encompassing the Internet of Things—including anything from industrial applications to smart fridges, from smart cities to self-driving cars—AR, VR, mobile media and games and their accompanying 5G telecommunication network and datacenters closer to the edge of networks. 
 
This growth happens in a rapid upgrade-or-die cycle. Planned obsolescence is implemented in hardware as well as software. Hardware is not made to last, and often contains components that will break relatively fast, even though for instance microchips, can last for decades. Because the hardware is often made in an unrepairable way —meaning if it breaks, it can only be replaced entirely, even if only one small component is broken— because it is cheaper to produce and it forces people to buy the product again relatively fast. Next to that, software and firmware for devices are not maintained after a certain time, so that even if the hardware still functions, the device becomes unusable because of faltering or insecure software. Lastly, software and services are increasingly demanding, needing faster CPU's, GPU's and for instance higher resolution screens, forcing hardware upgrades as well. The salvage computing pattern tries to address this problem of wastefulness and pollution that is happening on an industrial scale, by locally working with what is already there.
Context: 
Salvage computing means making use of locally available discarded hardware, transforming it into a renewed resource. It involves hardware repair and maintenance, the development and maintenance of open source software for older devices for which manufacturers have stopped their software support, hardware sharing, and lobbying policy makers to create regulation and legislation that enable these practices. 
 
Reasons for using this pattern can be an environmental ethics incompatible with the wasteful practices of the technology industry. Microprocessors for instance, can last for decades, and should be considered a precious resource based on the embodied energy they represent. Chip manufacturing, as opposed to hardware use and energy consumption, accounts for most of the carbon output attributable to hardware systems [9]. Another reason to turn to salvage computing could be economic, as buying new hardware is expensive and not affordable for many. Which leads to the third reason: inclusivity. Keeping up with the latest developments in hardware and software is not affordable for most, globally, and therefore excludes the disadvantaged from participation in using software services and software that requires recently produced hardware. This exclusion puts the already marginalized at a further socio-economic disadvantage, and reinforces the digital divide. There are other social justice related reasons, especially solidarity with workers in production facilities and formal as well as informal e-waste processing, who are exposed to toxic materials, hazardous working conditions and are poorly remunerated. Next to that, the environmental harm in the form of pollution, water and energy use, further endangers the health and well-being of workers and citizens living in proximity of factories, microchip fabrication plants and mining facilities. 
 
There are many stakeholders involved in this pattern: citizens, software developers, engineers, policy makers, lobbyists, repair shop owners and workers, repair cafe organizers and visitors, educators, hardware producers,, factory workers, miners and workers in informal and industrial e-waste processing facilities.
Discussion: 

Salvage computing has been described in several LIMITS papers in the past and together they provide insight into the applications, obstacles and potentials of this pattern. Barath Raghavan and Justin Ma discussed future scenarios involving resource and energy scarcity and point to reuse of hardware and software in computer networks as a way to avoid the construction of too many new devices with high embodied energy costs. They argue for networking technology to follow the principles of Appropriate Technology, including making devices simple, composed of local materials and easy to repair [26]. As Barath Raghavan and Shaddi Hasan point out in their paper Macroscopically Sustainable Networking: On Internet Quines, a salvage Internet is one way to drastically decrease the Internet’s dependencies, removing the need for manufacturing and transportation, as it uses only common, locally available components. They acknowledge it cannot be sustained in the long-term because it relies on functioning, or at least repairable, hardware [25]. 

In Towards a World of Fixers, Josh Lepawsky addresses this problem and identifies barriers and enablers to third party repair in the contexts of design, manufacturing, policy, and practice. One of the barriers Lepawsky mentions is planned obsolescense —the design for reduced service life. Ways manufacturers achieve this is through making the replacement, repair or upgrade of components difficult or impossible. An example is for instance the loss of user-detachable batteries, and using adhesives or soldering components to boards instead of using screws and bolts, and if screws and bolts are used, using proprietary ones. Next to that he mentions the use of restricting end-user license agreements and the criminalization of third-party repair. Roura et al. analyse the eReuse project in Barcelona and identify the association of reuse with poverty as an obstacle, as well as bookkeeping practices that devalue devices faster than their actual lifespan, creating the idea of valueless items that will trigger them to purchase new devices instead [24].

Enabling factors he identifies are legislation and regulation requiring manufacturers to make devices repairable, with as a first step advocacy for right-to-repair legislation. Only after these changes in design, manufacturing, and inherently the business models of hardware producers, have materialized, can there be a thriving network of independent, DIY maintenance and repair practitioners [13]. Brian Sutherland mentions the importance of enforcing manufacturers to use universal components, connection standards and interchangeable parts such as USB to ensure current and future compatibility between devices [37]. If repairing is not an option, reusing a device in a different way than its intended purpose, is another path, as pointed out by Remy and Huang. They also mention the enabling of a shift in lifestyle choices, one from wanting to possess the latest gadget to one in which it is desirable to own a device for a long time [27]. Blevis et al. call this New Luxury, where products are considered luxurious because they are of high quality and standard, not because they are expensive [3]. Heirloom computing is a related term, that expresses the desire for long lasting computing hardware that could be passed down from generation to generation [16].

Enabling factors on the software-side are discussed by for instance Devine Lu Linvega, one of the voices of the solarpunk merveilles.town Mastodon instance. They propose that creating software targeting old hardware might be a better approach than a focus on low-power, single-purpose computers, that may have lower energy consumption during their lifetime, but do require manufacturing [15]. Gemini protocol creator Solderpunk thinks along similar lines when writing: "the real long-term future of computing consists of figuring out how to make the best possible use we can out of the literal millions of devices which already exist". He argues that operating systems that still run on older hardware, and the software running on those operating systems, are very valuable things to develop and to maintain. He lists several things developers and users can do as 'good solarpunk praxis', with at the very top not buying any new devices, and instead investing in user-servicable used ones. He advises developers to invest in an (at least) 10 year old device and test their software on it, to push back against software 'progress' deprecating still functioning hardware. He also advises to support projects which develop software running on older or unsupported hardware, and those trying to ‘jailbreak’ locked down devices to make them more general purpose; by donating hardware, writing code, writing documentation or donating money [36].

Enabling factors in the DIY field of repair are skillsharing, documentation of repairs and the sharing of that documentation. In their paper Unplanned Obsolescence: Hardware and Software After Collapse, Jang et al. emphasize the need for social networks and institutions of people interested in computer repair, as they might prove invaluable for sourcing parts and maintaining the skills needed for successful repair culture [11]. There are currently several online communities involved in documenting repairs to consumer electronics, including computers and smartphones; the most prominent example is iFixit, a website with over 80,000 documented repairs (Fig. 3). The website also sells commonly needed materials, tools and spare parts. The Restart Project, a UK based organisation that started in 2013, is organising repair events across the UK and internationally. The project also lobbies for the Right to Repair in the UK and Europe. Lastly, in the Netherlands, many city councils have started repair cafés that welcome citizens to bring their broken devices in for repair in community centers. The Repair Café initiative was started in 2009 by journalist and activist Martine Postma in Amsterdam. Today, there are about 2000 cafés worldwide. Next to these grassroots initiatives, there is also a lively commercial smartphone repair culture consisting of small shops, also extending into hacklabs and fablabs, with an associated ecosystem of sourcing spare parts and skill sharing; unauthorized, sometimes very creative and often illegal interventions [20].

Scholar Jennifer Gabrys describes salvage as a practice of engaging with the discarded "with an eye to transforming what is exhausted and wasted into renewed resources" [8]. She adds the important observation that this process also means engaging with the conditions that led to disrepair; planned obsolescence, the rapid upgrade-or-die cycle of the tech industry and consumer capitalism in general, not to mention the impact of this on the Global South, which is receiving the West’s e-waste and suffers the pollution caused by the production of the Global North’s technology. The Right to Repair campaign engages with one of these conditions: planned obsolescence. The campaign was started in 2019, with as long term goal to remove the barriers to repair products, and in the short term ensure the EU introduces a scoring system on repairability as part of the existing energy label for all energy-consuming products. The campaign gathers 40 organizations from more than 16 European countries. Thanks to the successes of the Right to Repair movement in Europe, repair practices are gaining momentum there. 

Out of precarity, and because of the ongoing impact of colonialism, there are very rich and creative repair practices in existence—Jugaad, Gambiarra, Resolver, Shanzhai. Because of the sudden attention in the West to e-waste and supply chains, these practices of improvisation are appropriated and fetishized, yet as Ginger Nolan argues, the romanticizing of the inventiveness of these practices can function as an excuse to keep economic instability and precarity in place [21]. Instead, a focus on reviving historical, local repair practices that have become scarce or have disappeared could be a way to revive not only more sustainable practices using locally sourced material, but also reviving the skills that cannot be transmitted digitally, as well as traditional forms of negotiating value through the process of fixing, also things that cannot be quantified, such as the social role of repairers within a community [18].

Considering today’s urgent need to shrink consumption of resources, it is surprising to see that from the list—reduce, reuse, repair and recycle—the last one is the most wasteful, yet has gotten most attention. This emphasis on recycling can only be explained because the other three point to economic degrowth, an unpopular topic in mainstream politics to date. This shows the importance of a political agenda, next to design and praxis. 

Solution: 

The salvage computing pattern can be practiced at multiple scales. The largest scale is the one of developing and supporting a political agenda focused on degrowth and alternative economic models. One scale smaller, there is the demand for new laws requiring producers of electronic devices to make their products last long (planned longevity), repairable, with among other things: modular design, production of replacement parts for models for a substantial time after the release of a product, software and firmware updates and the eventual release of those as open source software, allowing others to take over after support is no longer required by law. Yet one scale smaller, there is the support and growth of local repair economies, both commercial ones as well as grassroots and activist projects, from repair-shops to repair-cafes. This support could include the legalizing of repair activities on proprietary hardware, as well as financial support for community projects. At the scale of software development, a focus on open source software and operating system development for older devices would support this pattern. Locally as well as online, the construction of a knowledge commons on how to do repair and hands-on skill sharing can help individuals and communities looking to engage with this pattern. 

Categories: 
orientation
Categories: 
organization
Categories: 
engagement
Themes: 
Economics
Themes: 
Policy
Themes: 
Social Critique
Themes: 
Community Action
Verbiage for pattern card: 

This pattern links repair practices with the potential of planned longevity and working with what is now considered waste, as resource [38]. There are many papers in the history of LIMITS dealing with this topic, leading to a very rich pattern.

Information about introductory graphic: 
Detail of the iFixit Repair Manifesto, by iFixit

Full LV Pattern Deck in Chinese (reduced filesize)

in
Resource name: 
full-lv-pattern-deck-chinese-reduced
Resource type: 
Pattern cards

Towards a New Public Infrastructure

in
Resource name: 
Towards a New Public Infrastructure — preprint
Resource type: 
Articles

Collective Intelligence for the Common Good

Organization's slogan: 
The CI4CG Action Research and Community Network consists of a group of nearly 100 like-minded individuals who have subscribed to the statement of principles and therefore aim to advance research and practice in collective intelligence for the common good. Join our mailing list at <a href="http://scn9.scn.org/mailman/listinfo/ci4cg-announce">CI4CG-announce</a> or contact the organisers if you’d like to join the network.

We are interested in working with practitioners and researchers from all relevant fields. Our hope is to consciously and organically nurture this community / network. The intent of this conscious community development is of course not to build a gated community, but to help focus attention on relevant issues including how best to engage the “outside” world and maintain porous borders. We hope to transcend the constraints of many dominant habits, institutions, and norms, especially when their strict obedience compels us to work in ways that are likely to be ineffective in addressing the common good of the planet and its inhabitants. It is our intent to help develop, maintain, and enhance projects and systems that are actually used.

Year the organization was founded: 
2013
Organizational engagement: 
Active
Organization's headquarters: 
cyberspace
Organization's geographic focus: 
Earth
Volunteer Opportunities: 
Join us! Planning events, designing resources, getting the word out
Contact person: 
Douglas Schuler
Contact information: 
douglas@publicsphereproject.org

Neighborhood based Community Health Workers

Pattern ID: 
913
Michael O'Neill
Healthy Living Collaborative
Version: 
1
Problem: 

Fragmented systems of service delivery that are intended to deliver health, social wellbeing, and safety are in need of course correction to address severe disparities in health and welbeing that exist.  The mandate of health care reform from the Affordable Care Act is to improve care, improve population health outcomes, and lower costs. In Washington State the timeline to accomplish this is five years.

 

How can organizations that have traditionally delivered units of care shift towards providing access to wellness for a population which creates health equity, increases local capacity, and transforms payment and delivery systems?

Solution: 

Community Health Workers are an emerging solution to this problem as shown by a case study of the Healthy Living Collaborative project in Southwest Washington and other similar projects which it is modeled after.  Community Health Workers (CHWs) are trusted community members among the people they serve who can fill a variety of culturally appropriate roles.  These roles increase access for the CHWs friends, family, neighbors, and peers to resources, knowledge, and skills that promote wellness.  CHWs are a credible voice for the lived experience of local needs and play a critical role in translating this information across cultural, social, and organizational boundaries.

Verbiage for pattern card: 

Community Health Workers are an emerging solution to this problem as shown by a case study of the Healthy Living Collaborative project in Southwest Washington and other similar projects which it is modeled after.  Community Health Workers (CHWs) are trusted community members among the people they serve who can fill a variety of culturally appropriate roles.  These roles increase access for the CHWs friends, family, neighbors, and peers to resources, knowledge, and skills that promote wellness.  CHWs are a credible voice for the lived experience of local needs and play a critical role in translating this information across cultural, social, and organizational boundaries.

Pattern status: 
Draft

Invitation to Join the Collective Intelligence for the Common Good Community / Network

Invitation to join the Collective Intelligence for the Common Good Community / Network

We would like to invite you to participate in a new research and action community network that focuses on Collective Intelligence for the Common Good. We hope that our collaborative efforts will help address our shared challenges.

Project Goals: 
Develop collaborative tools, policies, etc. — and links between them — that have a positive influence in addressing local and global challenges.

Bytes for All, Pakistan

Organization's slogan: 
ICTs for development, democracy, and social justice
Civic Organization Disclaimer: 
Possible disclaimer: This information has been entered by a person who isn't associated with the organization. It may be incomplete or contain mistakes. If you are associated with this organization and would like to maintain this information, please get a Public Sphere Project account and ask us to transfer ownership of this information to you.

Bytes for All (B4A), Pakistan is a human rights organization with a focus on Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). It experiments and organizes debate on the relevance of ICTs for sustainable development and strengthening human rights movements in the country.

At the forefront of Internet Rights movement and struggle for the democracy, B4A focuses on capacity building of human rights defenders on their digital security, online safety & privacy. Working on different important campaigns particularly against Internet censorship and surveillance in Pakistan, B4A continues to work on cyberspace issues, awareness raising and policy advocacy from civil liberties & human rights perspective.

Globally acclaimed Take Back The Tech Campaign is the flagship of Bytes for All, which focuses on strategic use of ICTs by the women and girls to fight violence against women in Pakistan.

Organizational engagement: 
Active
Organization's headquarters: 
Islamabad, Pakistan
Organization's geographic focus: 
Pakistan
Contact information: 
info[at]bytesforall.pk, Landline: +92 (51) 2110494-95 Cell. +92 333 5236060

Street Music

Douglas Schuler
The Public Sphere Project
Celebration of Public Music
Version: 
1
Problem: 

(note that the Problem Statement is still in work.....)

Music, including singing as well as the playing of instruments, has been a key element of the human condition for millennia. Unfortunately -- at least in the United States -- music has become more of a commodity, to be enjoyed passively and non-interactively. 

The rise of mass media is probably at least one of the culprits. 

Context: 

(note that the Context Statement is still in work.....)

Discussion: 

(note that the Discussion is still in work.....)

Street Music blurs the distinction between producer and consumer of music as well as the distinction between formal and informal venues for music production and consumption. 

Although street bands, including many of those found at Honk Fests, can be found at protests (including the Infernal Noise Machine (image below) that supported the demonstrations against the World Trade Organization in Seattle in 1999), their actions are often political to a large degree by virtue of their publicness in an era of electronic or other formalized or mediated forms of music consumption. 

See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-MLvzLlou4 for Environmental Encroachment's performance of Hashia.

 

Thanks to a member of the Bucharest Drinking Team and to Bob of Environmental Encroachment for their thoughts on the current breed of "new street bands" including their history and motivation. 

Solution: 

 

Solution in work:

something about establishing and supporting street music. More and more and more of it....

Categories: 
orientation
Categories: 
engagement
Categories: 
social
Categories: 
products
Themes: 
Social Critique
Themes: 
Community Action
Themes: 
Social Movement
Themes: 
Media Critique
Information about introductory graphic: 
Photo of Church, a marching band from Santa Rosa, California. Shot by Douglas Schuler, June 1, 2012. Georgetown (Seattle, WA)
Information about summary graphic: 

Infernal Noise Machine, Seattle Washington

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