Permacomputing is a term originating from the demoscene, known for squeezing the most out of very restricted computing resources, such as the 4k intro with a maximum executable file size of 4096 bytes.
Permaculture uses methods that lets nature do the work, minimizing the reliance on artificial energy. Heikkilä sees similarities between how both permaculture practitioners and hackers find clever solutions to problems. He writes that the existence of computers can only be justified by their ability to augment the potential of humans to have a strengthening effect on ecosystems.
As chips get faster they also automatically become inherently more efficient (more operations per unit of energy). But if you buy a new machine with every advancement that’s a hell of a lot of e-waste being traded for energy efficiency. So I have to wonder where permacomputing folks stand on that. I’m still using hardware from 15 years ago and my newest phone is trapped on AOS 5.1. Thus I have very little e-waste but I probably have more energy waste. Which is worse?
I guess every case is different - and you have to figure out what works for you.
Recently I had to replace my laptop, and as I use it for work I have no choice but going for a not too old model and install a double boot with Windows. I’d rather not, but there we are.
Phones, not sure, I use mine to read lemmy posts, but also for online banking and paying stuff, and taking photos of plants and mushrooms that I want to identify. But I also dislike having the phone with me all the time and wish I could return to dumb phone and restrict my social media use to the laptop. One could get used to pay stuff in town again, and have a sketch book and some pencils for the plants and mushrooms.
As for e-waste/energy waste - there also seem to be a lot of different approaches. How far do you want to go to restrict your energy use, for example, given that each transmitted byte costs energy? Some people will want to become amish-ly strict and will allow only the most essential snippet of text, others don’t want to give up their daily moving cat picture with bells and whistles and a pop tart …
I must say the banking apps are totally antithetical to permacomputing because they are the big offenders in pushing chronic upgrades that result in phones as landfill. It’s really a contest between desktop banking and analog banking (which includes bank by mail). I’m willing to do desktop banking only to the extent that privacy is respected. More and more banks are blocking tor and outsourcing bill pay to huge centralized corps who get to see everyone’s payments. So privacy and the environment are at odds and you have to choose between them.
When you talk about data transmission, that’s a bit different than processing power. I use very little bandwidth by doing everything in text (I even disable images in my gui browser). And because my consumption is low it’s much cheaper to connect over prepaid mobile networks than to have a hardwire. But then transmitting over the air wastes more energy per byte than a hardwire. The worst is Starlink, which I heard uses 30 times the energy per byte than terrestrial wireless.