💾 Archived View for jsreed5.org › log › 2023 › 202307 › 20230711-my-computer-challenge.gmi captured on 2023-11-14 at 07:55:47. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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I am not actively participating in Solene's "Old Computer Challenge"^ this year--I only heard about it yesterday evening and am not in a position to go all in at the moment. However, I do want to follow the spirit of the challenge this week by reducing my energy and technology footprint.
There are two ways I'm approaching it. The first is using a smaller machine with more limitations and requiring more active configuration, and the second is reducing the amount of content I passively consume.
The smaller machine I'm using this week is the ClockworkPi DevTerm Kit with a Raspberry Pi CM4. I received this intriguing little device a few months ago, which features a 1280x480 "double-wide retro" screen, a thermal printer module, and power supplied by two removable 18650 lithium batteries. While the keyboard is pretty cramped and dialog windows often scroll off the tiny screen, it has much more software support than my four-years-outdated PlanetComputers Gemini PDA. I'm leaving the PDA on the shelf this week, and if I can help it, my full-size laptop is going on the shelf next to it too.
Regarding content consumption, there are three main things I engage with on the Internet: Gemini, Wikipedia (and other informational sources), and YouTube. Of the three, YouTube by far takes up the most time, electrical energy and Internet bandwidth. I watch anything, from tutorials to news to hobbies to politics to music, a lot of which I don't really care about but it just seems interesting in the moment. I want to reduce my consumption by avoiding the temptation of the recommended video, and I'm doing it by uninstalling YouTube from my smartphone.
I'm less worried of my use of Gemini and informational resources. Gemini is a hobby project as well as a community for me, and I don't just passively skim it, so it can stay in my life. Similarly, informational resources are just that--informational--and I even have an offline version of Wikipedia I can use for purely educational purposes. But YouTube is a timesink, and a very unhealthy one at that.
To be honest, I'm not just interested in going through this for a week. I hope to permanently reduce the impact I have on the world and appreciate the world for what it already is, rather than feeling a need to impose my will on it. With any luck, this will only be the first "slow tech" week of many.
^ The Old Computer Challenge V3
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[Last updated: 2023-07-11]