Cyberdecks, Going Analog, Permacomputing, Medieval Guilds, and the Arts and Crafts Movement

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Within the algorithmic bubbles beneath the surface of the internet, there is a growing wave of people who are opting out of social media, opting out of technology, or simply opting out of the corpo-internet-techbubble hellscape.<br>As the internet flattens into a few social media platforms, with their bland - smooth - optimized - designs, we are losing the "color" of the internet. The corpo-internet-techbubble hellscape is something that you are already very familiar with. Everything feels the same, each platform copies features from their competitor, every one of the major social media platforms feels like they are created in a lab run by UI/UX designers who are desperately trying to keep you in an algorithmic prison by getting you addicted to the gambling machine that is the infinite feed. Many people have talked about this, the enshittification of the internet (and arguably everything around us), the flattening of not only aesthetics but also cultural reproduction.<br>There is an interesting breeze that's blowing through in certain corners of the internet at the moment. What feels like subtle shifts away from our computers and phones, and towards things we seemingly left in the past. But at the same time, an outlook on technology that both reaches into the past, and looks forward to a different future.<br>The things we left behind. The things we forgot. The things we miss.<br>We have forgotten what it means to be bored. We have forgotten what reality feels like when we aren't connected to the tendrils of a machine injecting dopamine directly into our brains - every second of every day. Our brains are collectively being stimulated around the clock. Perpetually plugged into the streams of information, videos, and notifications.<br>At all times, we can distract ourselves from our emotions. We can distract ourselves waiting for the elevator. Distract ourselves using the bathroom. Standing in line waiting for food, the first instinct is to reach for our phones.<br>Technology was supposed to connect us, and yet, we are disconnected by the constant connections. It's in this disconnection, this isolation, this growing antagonism to the systems that surround us, that the seeds of change are being planted.<br>People are starting to unplug and are returning to things they left behind - or seemingly were left behind but were always there. This is apparent in the rise of "journal tok", where people on TikTok are posting about returning to written journals, planners, and sketchbooks.<br>All of this, however, is a contradiction in and of itself, because people are posting online about how they are moving parts of their lives offline. This contradiction is important (when talking about consumerism and trends), but it's also just an indication of the current time. In order to share information, you most likely will have to share it online - to a mass audience - outside of your local/physical space.<br>People are also starting to dust off their old MP3 players, or finding old ones in thrift stores, in direct opposition to music streaming platforms. Piracy is back in full force. Why pay a subscription to a music streaming platform that can change what they host at any moment? Why support a music streaming platform that doesn't even pay artists, when you can pirate the music? The idea of ownership has been eroded by corporations that rent the things we used to own back to us.<br>The rise of owning physical media (or pirating) is directly connected to people returning to physical journals, planners, and sketchbooks. Tangentally, and almost on the exact opposite spectrum, other people are embracing technology as a way to remove themselves from the corporate internet. But this embrace follows the same idea as the overarching return to physical media - but now it's about the return to an older thought process around computers and a more future-focused outlook that questions the trajectory of computing going forward. Computers that are personalized, built, and modified not just for their use, but for specific aesthetics, and for specific and personal reasons. That's why we are seeing another wave of resurgence with cyberdecks.<br>Cyberdecks are changing for the better<br>I say that cyberdecks are having another wave of resurgence because the interest in cyberdecks waxes and wanes, like everything in life, there is a cycle to the ideas coming into focus and out of focus, washing into the shore and washing back out to the sea of etheral thought.<br>In my own view, cyberdecks have remained popular because of hacker culture. And all of the cultural norms wrapped up in hacker subcultures carries along with it. Specifically, the design of cyberdecks over the years has maintained a steady state of projects that maintain a military or scientific bend to them. They are afterall, influenced by science fiction about dystopian future societies that focus on war,...