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Look around at mainstream technology today.
What do you see?
A digital monoculture, a system that, like industrial farming, drains the very lifeblood from the soils it dominates.
Big Tech corporations produce identical devices with built-in expiration dates, pushing us into linear interfaces that measure our lives in productivity metrics rather than natural rhythms.
These platforms harvest our attention like crops, refining it into empty “content calories” that nourish our minds as poorly as processed foods nourish our bodies.
The waste they leave behind is just as destructive. Where industrial agriculture leaves behind dead soils that take generations to heal, discarded electronics create toxic landfills that poison the earth for centuries.
Both systems take diversity and compress it into standardized products, extract value without replenishing it, and leave devastation in the name of perpetual growth.
Recognizing these challenges, permacomputing offers a radical paradigm shift in how we approach digital technology, primarily by applying ecological wisdom to them.
It extends the permaculture ethics of Earth Care, People Care, and Fair Share into technological contexts, creating a framework for more mindful and regenerative computing.
Key principles
Permacomputing isn’t just a technical approach; it’s a philosophy that stimulates our imagination and invites us to rethink our relationship with digital tools and data.
At its core, permacomputing cultivates harmonious relationships between hardware, software, and human needs, prioritizing solutions that enrich the natural world rather than deplete it.
Unlike mainstream tech practices built on planned obsolescence and endless upgrades, permacomputing values longevity, repairability, and appropriate resource use.
Permacomputing encourages us to ask ourselves:
☀︎ How much computing do we actually need?
☀︎ What is the simplest solution that solves our problems effectively?
When we address these questions honestly, we uncover the three pillars of permacomputing practice:
Regenerative computing
Creating systems that repair rather than deplete our digital and physical environments.
This means designing software and hardware that minimize energy use, extend device lifespans, and consider their full life-cycle impact.
Appropriate technology
Using the right tools for the job instead of defaulting to whatever is newest or most powerful.
This might mean embracing older hardware, simpler software architectures, or lower-tech solutions when they serve our needs just as well.
Digital resilience
Building systems that can adapt, evolve, and thrive under changing conditions, rather than demanding constant replacement.
A living case study
This website represents my ongoing experiment in permacomputing, a living laboratory where ecological wisdom meets digital practice.
Like any healthy ecosystem, it evolves slowly, values resilience over novelty, and aims to give more than it takes.
So keep in mind that this Digital Sanctuary isn’t just a website; it’s a statement about what our digital future could be if we approached technology with the same care and intention that permaculture brings to our land and communities.
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