I kinda want to build a cyberdeck
Cyberdecks are having a moment with the socially-conscious, aesthetically-driven folks on social media. What does that say about politics and culture?
I’ve mentioned previously that I once had an overly rosy view of technology that—if I’ve grown as much as I think that I have—has been replaced with a much more critical stance. A big way that this rosy view showed up was a constant tracking of consumer technology and products, especially if they were weird and niche.
As is common for folks like me at the time, I was (and am) into video games; much of my techno-optimism was from being involved in that aspect of technoculture. As an example: I doubt anyone remembers these, but if you know about the Pandora handheld computer, you were tapped in.
Anyways, a big part of my metamorphosis has been my understanding of how mismatched the process of making all of these seemingly magical gadgets is with wider ideas about what is “good” or “moral”—at least at first blush. To make a long story short, the amount of exploitation needed to create my iPhone or the computer that I’m writing this on doesn’t map well onto a world of people who believe in Progress and Civilization. There’s not much that feels more “barbaric” or “medieval” than those terrible working conditions.
Learning about these things as a kid made it hard to have that same level of faith in tech; this was before I really started to learn about surveillance and the panopticon. All to say, this stuff is cooked.
I’ve struggled, to be frank, to engage with technology in a way that feels good, or, at the very least, manageable. I might, in my heart of hearts, be all the way at the Butlerian Jihad extreme, or damn close. I don’t see how that’s workable, though, and it probably sounds like I want to get rid of all of the “benefits,” full stop. Leaving those (important) details aside for a moment, I’m just reckoning with the fact that I’ve been longing for ways to think about how tech might have and create different social dynamics.
Photo by Kier in Sight Archives on Unsplash
Part of that is not saying “technology” when I just mean “computers,” or social media, or whatever other things are or are connected to digital technology. This does a bunch of different things, but the main one for this convo is that it allows me to think beyond that magic, silicon-laden light box. If a hammer or my block club are technologies too, that indicates that it doesn’t have to be all bad, even if it’s not all good, and even in spite of the ways in which the good can be used for bad. For me, the possibility of things being useful is a worthwhile starting point that I can very critically move toward.
I also have a lot of disdain for categorical ethical/ideological objections that aren’t backed up/paired with some concrete practice. Since I don’t have the capacity, drive, or wherewithal to help steward the immediate destruction of all computers—not to mention their proliferation, prevalence, and persistence—it feels pretty wack for me to run frame dissent as beginning and ending with their destruction.
I appreciate that negative impulse though, because I don’t want to just uncritically accept the situation I just described. This leads me into the direction of some things I want to explore more deeply; the combination of 1) appropriate and convivial technology, 2) degrowth, and 3) permacomputing.
This brings me to cyberdecks. They’ve been a thing for a long time, but have been having a bit of a Moment™ amongst folks on TikTok, alongside copycats like Instagram Reels and whatever YouTube is doing with shortform vertical. Starting with the bad: many of the “viral” ones I’ve seen are very much trying to address the mass production/consumption of Big Tech with a more boutique and “artisanal” feel.
This is “bad” not because I dislike “nice” things, or because I think that folks can’t make elegant and personalized stuff; that kitsch is something I find more appealing than the hyper-standardized mode that mass production confers. However, given the context, including the costs of materials, the ways in which it’s being communicated aesthetically on social media, and the general class positions that access to those two things implies, mean that this is just coming at petty bourgeois fulfillment from a different angle.
People who like mass culture and people who like artisanal stuff are just operating from two different locations within the same class matrix, as they aren’t trying to change production, distribution, consumption, and their social relations all at once. Tall order, I know, but that’s how change has to be thought of. If the intent is to “fight back against Big Tech,” that requires… fighting.
But it also requires building (along with inspiring and empowering). This is where the good comes in. Much of the way that I think about technology (expansive) is inspired by Hydroponic Trash, who has recently written about cyberdecks. That’s how I was able to articulate those connections between permacomputing with how digital tech is related to more broadly.
The general thrust is that folks should build “new” relationships to digital tech, with an eye towards (if yoy ask me) avoiding the pitfalls that stuff like “medieval guilds” and “the arts and crafts” movements did with relation to class, as mentioned earlier.
This might be done by, as a start, leaning deeply into permacomputing and building appropriate and appropriated infrastructure for hyper-marginalized populations. What if, rather than being (solely) a site of personal dissent, cyberdecks were used as part of multimodal literacy campaigns, giving folks who might not otherwise get the chance or ability to understand these technologies, given that most products are sealed shut?
Alongside this, efforts to subtend the pervasiveness of Big Tech should be at the fore, where workers and “users” (with a strong bias towards users and hyperexploited workers like data labelers) remove the ability for the industry to spread its tentacles across every sphere of life.
What I’m getting at is that these activities should be thought of in ecological terms, where the action of building cyberdecks or solar cookers or longbows or whatever else isn’t seen as isolated goods-in-themselves, whatever value that perspective may have. It can be done because it’s fun, or interesting, or useful, or whatever; but those of us who are interested in changing conditions shouldn’t be satisfied with that. Builders don’t necessarily have to be a part of a “movement,” but “movements,” or people working to “organize” change should build those connections and encourage folks to have that perspective be part of the impetus for building.
That’s what I see as missing from these cyberdeck conversations; the connective tissue that makes the resistance they portend or signify tangible. By actually being situated in a movement context, where the immediate benefit is felt by those who can’t rely on mainstream access, and that spreading to less marginal folks over time, this thing that I find really cool can actually become something more than entertainment for folks with disposable time and income.
