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Continuing my thoughts on salvage computing I want to address something on my own that, well, might end up just being another version of talking about points similar to viznut's essay on aesthetics:
Digital Esthetics, environmental change and the subcultures of computer art
One thing that I think goes wrong in a lot of degrowth style conversations is the idea that we're necessarily sacrificing our own happiness and well-being for the sake of the planet.
I reject that premise and think it leads far too easily down the path of ecofascism, a path where you start sacrificing not just happiness but life itself in the name of environmental causes.
Instead of asceticism and sacrifice, I think we should instead focus on the original ideas of Epicurean hedonism: that pleasure is a moral good but that pleasure does not imply ravenous excess, which is not real pleasure in the long term, but rather appreciation with moderation and simplicity. That kind of pleasure means you're not forever seeking more and more but are, instead, able to enjoy something for what it is.
So when I talk about sustainable computing and doing more with less I don't mean computational asceticism I mean what I'll call "computational hedonism". The reason why I bring up viznut's essay again is that I think the kind of demoscene work he's involved in and innovations like bytebeat music are a perfect example of computational hedonism. They involve making art: creative, technically challenging, fascinating art with very limited resources.
Another example of this would be what 100rabbits is doing with uxn right now. The tl;dr is that they've created a small virtual computer that can be ported to basically any hardware imaginable and provides just enough abstractions and horsepower to be usable for all their art projects
I don't know what fits the Epicurean idea of pleasure if it's not making art in ways that allow you to appreciate what you have, working within constraints and limitations to further your skills and challenge yoursel, to make art in a way that can last and survive.
That's one reason why I think focusing on the arts is going to be important for the story of sustainable computing: we need to both demonstrate and live out the ideal that we can make art, music, games, stories, &c. even with the limited tools of permacomputing. By doing that, by finding our pleasure in ways that reject the need for >1k graphics cards with thousands of cores, I think we can create art with computers in a hedonistic way.
At the end of the day, I think we don't have to give up our happiness we just need to find better ways of creating it.