Tech Comfort

The first time I realized about the "tech comfort" thing was the time I was given a Linux and a reason for being given a Linux.

But let me explain.

Science Fiction inspires a lot of scientists and developers into building and feeling comfort with technology. At some point I believe what we watched and read sometimes guided us into feeling that way or another towards technology.

I think a lot about this when I see some tech over there and I ask myself "but why?" and sometimes the answer is that it's flashy and we are facing a lot of uncomfortable things in our daily life, things that escape our reach, and we just want to feel comfort in those flashy techie things, since it reminds us of fun "sci-fi".

There was a huge life-changing moment in my life when I started reading Ursula's K Le Guin. Until then, as a sci-fi lover I was excusing tons of things that I saw that were uncomfortable, trading them with the joy that the rest of the story would bring me. ut then I found a spot of sense, complexity and human rights blended with scifi I didn't quite encounter before in the same way. It was a very similar comfort I found when I saw "Princess Mononoke" or "Nausicaä", and it wasn't until very recently (few years) that I found out about the concept of solarpunk.

Going back to tech, which is our deal over here, I studied an expertise in electronics back there in the computer engineering grade. I must say my whole interest in programming and computing when I was a kid was towards androids and replicants and the concept of machines thinking by themselves, but at some point I just lost interest of that because I discovered things like digital rights, repairing and building things from other things. Electronics felt like crafting, and I just got into it. By that time I started working as a programmer and got in contact with classmates and coworkers who enjoyed programming and tech just because. I think a lot of us can relate. Yet at that time I felt "something's not right".

My first question before continuing with this article is, have you felt like that as well? have you felt that tiny little "this is not quite right but I don't know why" feeling?

Anyway, while I started working in a complete different field, I enjoyed using my electronics knowledge in stories. I've been writing scifi since I was a teenager, and I still do. At some point I just needed to feel the same comfort I found in solarpunk works, so I started writing and thinking towards that. I thought "hey this is not that impossible tbh", and I started asking around my community about it, and some people showed their writings, too. I discovered then some other persons are trying to live like that, and then I got towards minimal computing and toning down tech. At this point I was questioning myself, "how much of this makes sense in our daily life?" and it's been a really complex question that I'm still working towards to. Until now all I got clear was the fact that it makes sense to keep the "this is not right" feeling alive, as a way of pinching myself to look for -general- comfort on tech.

What is comfort for a person growing up in a climate crisis?

I discovered, after reading other people ideas, and spending times wondering on my own that this sort of tech makes sense only if the community and the society it evolves think towards the values of co-work, empathy and constant reviewing. This is not an original idea at all. Susan Leigh Star and other of her colleagues in the field of sociology towards information in modern society came to the conclusion that there are many invisible elements in society that are critically needed to make everything works the way it works, and understanding how some of those elements work together (even if they don't even know themselves) it's the way of changing unfair or uncomfortable actions (she for example researched feminism in those terms). Feeling of comfort are just feelings, but a community of people caring for each other comforts makes a lot more tangible sense. Therefore, sustainable technology only makes sense in a sustainable context: using solar power panels to partially fuel a massive data center that requites tons and tons of clean water in a country under drought doesn't makes sense, but when you only see the solar panel thing, it maybe looks like it does, because as a developer or as an user, you might relate it with a fast response in a platform. Depending on your values maybe even the water thing, because what could we do about it?

I recently worked -slowly- towards the goal of reading off-line. Turns out I'm the "I need to check this a lot of times" kind of person, and every time we click and load a site (and even more nowadays) we are asking for adverts, data collecting, statistics and more. Apart from the fact that this makes me uncomfortable it takes a really long time, while if downloading it once, I can check it whenever I need. It seems awfully obvious but I got in the "everything is online all the time" train and I forgot about that, until I read about a couple of persons who live in a boat and needed to download texts a lot so to be able to read or enjoy those, because Internet doesn't always work. I'm absolutely not in that situation but I'd hate to feel anxious about not having Internet connection, or not being able to access to critical info if somehow I lost my Internet connection, so I've been slowly working towards this. Would you feel anxious if you didn't have Internet for a long while?

Anyway, I found a really interesting project called "Gemini protocol" that is thought and built with these sort of questions in mind. All about using simple, straightforward resources and linking images or media instead. There are many ways of browsing the contents, my favorite is amfora, a in-terminal application, but there are others.

What I want to say is that tech is a tool, a method to reach and build something else, and what we make with it is a statement. I've learnt about it through the Free Software community, but somehow I think it's more than just sharing and explaining, it's about thinking what we've built and, maybe, start over at some point (even if it looks like stepping backwards in terms of "productivity") since it might be the key of building a more comfortable way of understanding and interacting with technology, the type of comfort that has to be thought slowly, in community, sometimes offline.

When someone points out the new techie trend is not sustainable, what do you think? do you think "party killer"? if so, how attached are you to that tech?

I usually confront this feeling, as a techie person myself. But I'm also given that answer when I try to justify changes in Free software communities for supporting feminism and sustainability, moving the focus to the context of people instead of tech (though I must say most of the people are wonderful and regardless if they agree or not they try to discuss in a friendly open way). I love programming, I love trying new things, I love confronting technical challenges, yet I don't want those feelings to get the shape of productivity and tech-empowerment above everything else. I somehow want to spend a lot of time, sometimes months thinking about the shape of digital elements in life.

In a story I'm writing, the main character (a researcher in a moon with an extreme weather) is meant to do a scientific research. Somehow I imagined a cranky computer, e-paper screen, with a sliding keyboard that she sort of release from the wall, in which she uses an IRC and a repo to talk to her peers. She uses some sand and solar batteries to make that and the electronics for the research work. This made me feel happy, as weird as it sounds.

In another story that I wrote, the main character is a weather analyst, what is called "Clouds" in a future Al-Andalus shaped society (the past society that used to live where I was born), and people are used to download off-line maps and text from local docks in libraries and trains. And this made me happy, again as weird as it sounds.

But what I feel is or not "happy tech" is not important, actually.

What sort of technology makes you happy? Have you ever stopped to think why?

Maybe spending some time asking yourself that is nice, there's no rush really. Sometimes social media makes us think there's rush. On that, on everything; There isn't.

But it might be an interesting exercise, so to understand why are we doing what we are doing. Our digital actions, as users or as developers, have consequences. Are we having a choice upon those actions? Should we be having more?