Cyberdecks, going analog, and convivial technology
blog.hydroponictrash.solar
blog.hydroponictrash.solar
Yes, there are few people who created cyberdecks as a counter-culture, anti-company tool (which is a lot of what the author argues).
But some of the newer ones they highlight are nothing more than engagement farming reels. They are the very definition of the opposite of what the author writes here:
> We want to escape the algorithmic plantations that tech companies have herded us into.
I don't know of they fail to see this because they are blinded by their hope or there is a more complex viewpoint I'm missing.
I'm arguing that the author's main point is based on the Instagram posts, and this is invalid.
There is. "We want to escape" is a very different viewpoint from "we want to liberate the masses."
Freeing yourself from the social media is definitely doable. Depending on how firmly engaged you are at the moment, it can vary in difficulty between fait accompli and moderately challenging. It's obviously possible for anyone to do themselves.
Liberating the masses? Morpheus said it best:
"The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But when you're inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it."
I don't think this is a point the author spoke about at all.
To crudely summarize what I think their claim is: Cyberdecks are an anti-big tech creation. They are spreading outside traditional hackers and the proof is these reels.
My claim is that cyberdecks are not spreading, and instead those reels is just evidence that (a) people will mine all subcultures for topics that they can create views from and (b) the author themselves is enabling this behavior.
Post your creation on a social channel not dominated by white bros?
You are fake, a culture miner and engagement farming.
See the post above for a textbook way of rejecting anyone who isn't a white tech bro.
But maybe you are right and it isn't just engagement mining. I think my problem is more that I'm comparing the level of finish on the original cyberdecks to these ones, and they don't compare well.
But perhaps I should be thinking of these as prototype level ones.
(It's also very valid to point out the original ones were so well finished because they were engagement mining too)
It feels overly negative to me. People, mostly younger people, are building them, tinkering with them and are excited to post about them. Is it any surprise they’re doing so on TikTok or wherever? Yes, it’s a little ironic considering the anti-big-tech vibes mentioned in the article, but is it any different from when our lot were posting to Google+ etc?
I don’t know, this feels like a good thing to me, and something we should encourage. The more people playing and experimenting with tech rather than passively consuming the better.
If I was a teenager again today I like to think I’d be hacking one of these together.
I think I'd over indexed on the unfinished look of some of them, but relooking at them as prototypes instead of the level of the original set makes them seem more reasonable.
While there are definitely a few notable builds that involved actually-interesting technical problem solving, I think most cyberdecks make more sense through the lens of physical concept art exploring what a rugged or perhaps ultra-personalized personal computer can be.
Which, don't get me wrong, is generally fine, because not everything has to be functional, art is important, bla bla bla. Problem however is when the algorithm gets involved and "being not part of the mainstream" becomes a mainstream metric to optimize for.
This feels like that, and - as it often has happened - it weaponizes the usual stuff to defend itself. Which we do not want, because the stuff it weaponizes is actually important, so it should not be tainted by the big value extraction machine in the cloud.
It basically explains this mechanism in great detail.
Bunnie Huang's Precursor project was a genuine act of rebellion against the locked down nature of modern computing. These cyberdecks are tacky cosplay accessories for adults.
Raspberry Pi as a platform has revolutionized access to computers in my opinion, though since the RAM crisis started not so much anymore due to the insane price differences. But the Hackberry is the computing device where I think it has lots of potential for being my actual "Linux on the go" that I wanted but never got ... for the last 15(?) years waiting for it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HK0uAKkt0AE colorforth deck
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kn0MxHlima0 discrete deck built like the tandy 1000
If Cyberdeck builds get people building, then it's all good. Farming does encourage others to build so it's all heading in the right direction :)
Am I a 'real' fan of band X, or not, because I only got into them with there latest hit album?
This isn't a new thing. Niche thing becomes popular. Fans of niche thing try to gate keep.
My biggest critique would be that the author doesn't realise the 'algorithmic plantation' they are in. The only cyberdecks I've seen are made by white men. Not trans and black people.
Further I don't even think it's about cyberdecks per se. That's the in thing. Before that it was neo pixels or whatever. People like to make things, and people are influenced by others. The cyberdecks isn't the counter cultural element. It's the making of whatever that is. Cyberdecks are just the latest thing.
It's also telling that the most popular videos are about building the most visually striking Cyberdecks and not about building what a Cyberdeck is actually useful for—that's what gets engagement on short-form video platforms.
But I think it's a massively positive thing overall:
-Women, LGBTQ folks, and other underrepresented groups are finding their way to these nerdier hobbies.
-People are getting tired of technology taking over their lives, specifically attention economy and surveillance tech.
-People are learning about electronics and understanding that there are other ways of doing things.
I fail to see the negative in this. Even if none of these cyberdecks are used for practical purposes, someone learned something new. And, even if their cyberdeck gathers dust, being conscious of their tech usage might change how they use their MacBook or the internet more generally.
I think what you're saying is a bit like criticizing someone for not being a self-sustaining farmer because they only grew their own vegetables one summer and then quit.
They may not only eat their own vegetables, but that experience may lead to them buying from farmer's markets vs. Big Food. And that's a net positive.
I don't really see the value in a full-computer experience (which seems to be what most cyberdecks try to do - badly) but I can see utility in "sidecar"-style hardware, which is more akin to a phone app but with a better experience because of custom hardware.
I have a bunch of Home Assistant controls using a variety of custom controls and cases.
I have a custom version of Seeed's ESPClaw (https://github.com/Seeed-Projects/espclaw - there are a lot of other ESP Claws too) with a case.
I'm working on a Tamgotchi-style mini-game device using ESP-NOW to connect with nearby devices.
Lots of other random projects at various stages of development.
One-shotted LVGL UI (which I think it a bit ugly).
A Bluetooth gateway has a flat battery so 2 temperature sensors aren't getting relayed.
This is a Guition ESP32-S3-4848S040 board with this case https://makerworld.com/en/models/2859961-guition-4-esp32-s3-...
About $25 in total I think.
Currently it's mostly a case of building them to solve specific problems, and I don't really have much else I need. This one controls my temperature and lighting for when I don't want to pick up my phone.
I have physical switches for most things too.
I realize that this sounds fantastical, and I don't know how something like that could be implemented in the current situation. It's more the idea that while Facebook and similar platforms allow us to see content from people all over the world, we completely miss out on what's happening in our own local area.
I'm not so sure whether bullying is really a big problem. In such a regional environment, it makes little sense to appear "anonymous." You might not want your name and address publicly available, but if you comment on the popular parties and clubs, neighborhood happenings, etc., people who know you in real life will naturally recognize you. Ultimately, it comes down to how the local population operates.
Exactly, and the local layer is actually were we as normal people have the most power of participation, opportunity to find consensus and act together for the overall common (local) good. And the beautiful emergent side-effect is that this local good turns automatically into a global good if it's approached locally from the bottom up.
Side-note: The (global) commercial news industry is very contra-productive to actual useful action: by reporting 24/7 almost only negative out-of-reach quick changing 'news' that people can't possible resolve in any way by their own, has as effect the entrapment of cynicism that keeps people from doing local community action. This inertia is of course very welcome by the few conglomerates that run the world and rather would like seeing you in despair and inactive while patching over the real issues with cheap consumerism they also conveniently provide.
Study after study shows that the only real antidote to this despair is local-action: bounding together with others and doing positive tangible things on the local level.
To me, it feels like we already tried not being able to talk to people who were far away from us once already, and what it did was lead to cultures dominated by the most popular view. Uncommon and unpopular voices were marginalized to the edges (at best - sometimes they were met with violence and bullying) and often ignored completely. If you were on the fringe, you either didn't have anyone to talk to or had to befriend the one other person within 25 miles with a similar quirk.
Is it bad that the internet has amplified the voices of every fringe group to ridiculous volumes? Sure. On the other hand, people in the US people use the terms "black neighborhood" and "white neighborhood"? That's what staying local gets you. Local only was gross then, and it's gross now.
Almost every larger city has a more or less active subreddit these days, on platforms like Twitter you can look what people post with a city name tag. And then there are Mastodon and Lemmy/Piefed with instances for geographic regions.
They once existed (see Sony Vaio P 2nd gen; coolest thing in the universe) but modern OEMs no longer have such taste.
The keyboard is surprisingly usable, although of course nowhere close to that of a laptop, but still usable for short periods. I got a fully fleshed out Arch gaming setup (manual install) and I use it on a regular basis like a Steam Deck and just a portable dev/test machine at work.
This fad is more about making custom cases for hardware.
If you built one of those you were automatically the DJ after school, at the skate park, etc. You better believe those SLA batteries were heavy.
Any real world examples? I don't think that's plausible from a RFI, power, heat, or just plain fragility perspective even with the cheapo hobbyist instruments suitable for kitbashing and only energizing a couple of instruments a time.
Take a look at this one:
https://hackaday.io/project/174301-raspberry-pi-sdr-cyberdec...
Or this one:
https://hackaday.io/project/192016-the-obsium-cyberdeck
Or take a look at what saveitforparts does on youtube
Measured my thumb's swiping arc and designed a split keyboard specifically for my hands. Managed to get every symbol in there with no layers. Now I just need to save up some money and order protypes so I can get a feel for the switches. Can't move forward until I've perfected the keyboard.
I get that the term has moved on, and cyberdeck means whatever people say it means now. But to me, these are just novel retro diy laptops. I think given today's technology you could sort of a approximate a cyberdeck with some low end ar/vr glasses like something from xreal and ditch the screen.
There was also a musical Tesla coil. And some group called Anderstorp, who converted a massive obsolete router into a beer tap.
Was it? According to whom? The quoted phrase is pretty much a meme at this point, but I don't think it's true. This would suggest people in the 80s and 90s were sitting around feeling lonely and isolated, wishing they could be "more connected".
Technology has always been about one thing: giving people more freedom. Whether it's the ability to make coffee at home, or travel vast distances at great speeds whenever you want to, it's all about people being free from the constraints of relying on society (and the environment) for things.
It's all fundamentally counter to a cohesive society. It was never going to make us "more connected", quite the contrary. Asimov saw where this was going half a century ago. In his books the Solarians took technology to the extreme, allowing them to live alone on enormous estates affording them all the freedom in the world. But they were alone, communicating only remotely through screens. They didn't even have sex any more. Sound familiar?
When I read this as a teen it totally put me off "freedom" as the singular goal so many people treat it as. I didn't want to end up like that. I don't want to be alone. Life is about sharing and technology is never going to help with that, it's only going to make it worse, if we let it.
> This is apparent in the rise of "journal tok", where people on TikTok are posting about returning to written journals, planners, and sketchbooks.
Is this intended to be ironic? People will do anything for views on TikTok, including making videos about not using TikTok. If anyone does anything and puts it on TikTok, or other social media, I assume they're doing it for the views, not because they actually enjoy it. If you want to find someone who enjoys cooking, find someone who will cook and eat with you, don't look on TikTok. If you want to find someone who doesn't like TikTok, well, guess where you won't find them.
The rest of the article is filled with TikTok videos which I'm not going to watch.
Unfortunately getting that as elective surgery is impossible in the developed world and the quality of Brazilian back alley brain surgery leaves a lot to be desired.
Also gave a workshop last weekends to kids and brought a "server" as a RPi Zero and a cheap (as in goodie level) tiny battery.
Damned, I'm part of the "movement".
I am not trying to look down on a hobby. Building cyberdecks is cool, and it's a great learning experience, but it's not a movement.
Other than being a fun project, a cyberdeck serves no practical purpose and lacks any real daily driving application. It sparks no actual rebellion. it's just a product not the revolution. but i wish it was, i genuinely wish people would just show the finger to big corporations.
> I say that cyberdecks are having another wave of resurgence because the interest in cyberdecks waxes and wanes, like everything in life, there is a cycle to the ideas coming into focus and out of focus, washing into the shore and washing back out to the sea of etheral thought.
> In my own view, cyberdecks have remained popular because of hacker culture. And all of the cultural norms wrapped up in hacker subcultures carries along with it. Specifically, the design of cyberdecks over the years has maintained a steady state of projects that maintain a military or scientific bend to them. They are afterall, influenced by science fiction about dystopian future societies that focus on war, dystopian corporate megacities, or interstellar travel.
AI or just terrible writing?
I'm all in for lowtech, degrowth, permacomputing, Bookchin municipalism and Illich like "tools for conviviality" but here it seems.. candid and non genuine.
> The Middle Ages, the Industrial Revolution, and our current Techno-Fudalist time are all connected. We still have lords (land lords, the bourgeoisie), we still have kings who enclose the commons (billionaires who enclosed the commons of the internet), who enforce violence with the hand of private armies of knights (the police and military), who demand that we provide for them while they subjugate us. Medieval Guilds & The Arts and Crafts movement
> Medieval guilds were created during feudal times as a challenge to the labor exploitation of the working class of the time. In some areas, guilds were organized by specific crafts. Metalsmithing, woodworking, and textiles are some examples. Guilds had specific guidelines on quality, and they created widespread quality control over the goods produced by the artisans in the guild. If a woodworker produced bad-quality furniture, their guild could basically force them to remake it to their quality standards.
> Guilds were basically worker cooperatives (in some cases) or could be thought of as trade-specific labor unions