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Electrical systems are tools created by humans for the purpose of
solving the many and various problems humans may encounter. Unless
some electrical system acquires sapience, electrical systems cannot
have moral agency. They remain at the status of tools, and not people.
Almost all the electrical systems we come across today were created
and implemented for the purpose of profit. The fact that capitalism is
the dominant mode of production for the human species obscures the
fact that electrical systems are tools, which are created, operated,
maintained and for the benefit of humans. As Marx says in Das Kapital:
Volume I, capitalism makes it look as if electrical systems, as
commodities, have some sort of magic power, and have some sort of
ability to move themselves through human society. Capitalist makes it
look as if commodities themselves have the ability to make decisions
and limit or enable human potentials.
But the idea that, say, Facebook, the x86_64 ISA, Twitter, Bitcoin,
the US Dollar, MacOS or Windows are moral demeritous forces in human
society in and of themselves is a complete falsehood, and an illusion
of capitalism.
Electrical systems, like computers, music synthesisers, lasers,
satellite surveillance systems, RFID tags etc. etc. are always under
the control of some human, or group of humans. The evil effects that
electrical systems can have in our current society are because they
are under the control of a tiny minority of ultra-rich people. This
ruling class uses systems like nuclear weapons and big data processing
algorithms to control and oppress the population of the world.
~nand.club stands for the liberation of electronic technology from the
hands of the few. When placed into the hands of the many, electrical
systems will lead to the liberation of the human species from work,
boredom, and drudgery. ~nand.club promotes the use of electrical
systems for the liberation of human beings.
When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty. There exists a
ruling class using electrical technology to enrich itself at the
expense of the great mass of humanity. It is therefore everyone's
moral duty to protect themselves against the oppression that the
global ruling class exerts through computers and electronics.
It is also everyone's duty to fight back against the oppression of the
global capitalist ruling class that they exert through electrical
systems. Reverse engineering, circuit bending, piracy, theft, and
other forms of ethical hacking are all necessary to bring about the
end of capitalism. This is because big electrical-commodity producing
firms are trying to limit your freedom through your use of their
products. Microsoft and Apple operating systems for instance are not
distributed with their source code. This renders them non-liberatory
forms of technology, because one is not able to transparently check to
see exactly what is running on one's computer when it is running Apple
or Windows code.
The same goes for the ''purpose'' for which capitalist firms
originally advertise their commodity to be put. Following and obeying
the technological authority of a capitalist firm and using their
commodities the way they tell you to limits your freedom. Marx put it
rather vividly: capital is like a vampire, feeding on your living
vital forces. The more capital sucks from you, the more it lives. The
more you follow the authority of Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Adobe,
Nvidia etc., the more they gain control over you, and continue
oppressing the human population of the world.
Private property is immoral. The sole basis of capitalist private
property is the ability to coerce people, by excluding them from
control of the means of production. Without private property, it is
possible to have democratic control over the means of production. In a
word: Communism.
In order to combat the forces of capitalism under capitalism, the
~nand.club tilde promotes the practice of gifting objects
(use-values), products, services, and data. Capitalism seems to
succeed because the use-values it provides are incredibly cheap:
The cheap prices of commodities are the heavy artillery with which
it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the
barbarians’ intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to
capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt
the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what
it calls civilisation into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois
themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own
image. (The Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels, 1848)
As the quotation from Marx and Engels explains, people choose
commodities like Windows and fast food because (at least when OEM),
they are cheap and conveninent. People frequently opt not to
participate in more ethical and environmental practices because
capitalism deliberately disincentivises them from doing so. Why use
some Free Software when there is some cost in time to gain the skills
in order to use it?
Nothing is more convenient, however, than a gift. Some data, some
electronic components, either liberated from some capitalist outlet or
otherwhise, should all be gifted on ~nand.club. This is one way we can
create a culture of true hacking--the kind of hacking of the 1950s and
1960s--the free sharing of tools and information by those with bosses
trying to steal their products of their labour. Something freely
available in the commons that does not ameliorate the effects of
capitalism is resistance to capitalism.
~nand.club also supports the practice of liberation of use-values and
services from the status of being private property of some capitalist
firm. In the case of tangible, physical use-values, theft is not an
insurrectionary or power-building form of praxis, it is merely
amelioratory, but is is a progressive act of resistance. In the form
of software, some liberation of software may in fact significantly
damage the control the ruling class may have over some particular
means of production.
~nand.club is a part of the Solar Punk movement. The following
sections are lifted from What is Solar Punk @ Solar Punk
Anarchist. They express the essence of what solar punk is, and it is
worthwhile giving quotation at length because it is good to re-use and
promote other people's work where it expresses the same goals as your
own.
Solarpunk’s vision is of an ecological society beyond war, domination,
and artificial scarcity; where everything is powered by green energy
and a culture of hierarchy and exclusion has been replaced by a
culture founded on radical inclusiveness, unity-in-diversity, free
cooperation, participatory democracy, and personal self-realisation.
While steampunk imagines a past that might have been, based on
Victorian-age technology, solarpunk imagines a future that could be,
based on current-age technology. It anticipates the type alternative
history science-fiction the people of the future might write about us
if things turn out horribly. But more than just a new science-fiction
or fantasy subgenre, it’s also practical vision for (maybe) bringing
the things it imagines into being in the real world.
This would be a world of decentralised eco-cities, 3D printing,
vertical farms, solar glass windows, wild or inventive forms of dress
and design, and a vibrant cosmopolitan aesthetic; where technology is
no longer used to exploit the natural world, but to automate away
needless human labour and to help restore the damage the Oil Age has
already done.
~nand.club exists, among the other purposes of anti-capitalism,
commodity liberation, participatory democracy etc, for the promotion
of the solar punk movement.