Hey ya’ll.
I’m looking for people who are interested in creating FOSS Software for a solarpunk based agricultural revolution: Bottom up, from the people, for the people - dreaming together, building together. Welcome to Stewbards Hub!
Technolocially, there is but a littlest prototype as of yet. What is of great importance right now is to find a core team and organizational structure to be able to have this thing grow as a community.
Questions of how to foster non-hierarchy, decentralization and diversification of power and architecture and move away from the mono-maintainer are at the center right now. Get involved on the Matrix to discuss these things - or simply underneath this post. Nothing’s set in stone yet :+)
https://matrix.to/#/#stewbards.hub:matrix.org
I’ve personally started working on the MeanderingMap - a tool to mark and track plants on, well, a map, that shall ultimately also link seperate gardens together to turn them turn into a mycelized, decentralized network of collaborateurs sharing materials, plants and labour in a self organized fashion. Think Zenjob meets social media meets openstreetmaps meets Craigslist… This will enable* communal workflows* and labour to be distributed based on wants and inclinations, allowing spontaneity and flexibility instead of the rigidity imposed by current contractual hyperspecializing work culture. “Hey I’ve got cow dung. Anyone want to pick it up”. “We harvesting today. Anyone wanna join? We’ve got e guitars and amplifiers too so the vibe is great!”
Then, besides that, more long term ish, We want to get involved in upcycling old tech and turn them into useful** gardening robots**. Here, we must tread carefully: i think automation must’nt come to early. There needs to be a direct, personal relationship with land and plants before that can be turned into algorithms; otherwise, it’ll likely degenerate into another oppresive, anthropocentric mess. That’s why we’re starting with the map too: it is, also, a library of knowledge! We shall gather all things related to plants, their interactions; ecology, techniques, technology, but also communication, organization, workflow… so that ultimately, we can hopefully then leverage this knowledge and synthesize it to create those robots and systems enabling a transformation of large scale agriculture.
If these topics are of interest to you - be that from a technical perspective, one concerned with social, ecological or ethical perspectives, one that is interested in organizational structures or one of aesthetics - **please reach out to me! ** We are just getting started and its of vital importance that this comes from a place of community. Love ya’ll :+)
Join the Matrix Chat: https://matrix.to/#/#stewbards.hub:matrix.org
well it’s a prototype and that is vibe coded. once there’s a “we” instead of just me i think there’ll be less of it. though, i think for CRUD and basic GUI generation i don’t see why one shouldn’t vibe code if one has no artistic ambitions in those regards. i think when it comes to creating the mycelized network protocol is where we’ll really really need to be all-human so to speak as well as in general design decisions. again: just a prototype though. i am a programmer but i think it’d be wrong for me to personally to decide on large parts of the architecture of this particular project given that it’s intended to be an experiment in like true community creation, you see? so uhm tldr: yes absolutely no shame in that it’s literally just CRUD.
whats your thoughts on LLM’s in coding, communal coding and how it relates to this project in particular?
IMHO, using an AI that’s run on a corporate data centers encourages the construction of yet more data centers, with all of the environmental/climate negatives they bring, as well as local harms they induce on the people living near them, such as increased electricity rates.
Using corporate AI directly helps the financial situations of the big tech companies that host them (by boosting usage/user numbers, they are able to attract more investment capital), most of which are owned by fascist CEO’s who are more than willing to collaborate with and fund fascist governments to ensure that they are not regulated in search of both maximum profits. Some of these companies, such as Nvidia, Palantir and Oracle, genuinely appear to be seeking to use these tools for what would previously be considered crackpot conspiracy theory levels of public control and surveillance.
There is also the problem of all current LLMs being trained on copyrighted code, and being prone to perfectly reproducing the code, introducing the possibility of unknowingly committing copyright infringement into the code base, which could lead to small open-source developers getting sued down the line.
Lastly, LLMs are extremely prone to hallucinating, which can often result in bugs or vulnerabilities that won’t be caught by a developer that doesn’t intimately understand every aspect of the code, and often results in an unmaintainable code base long-term.
Overall I don’t think LLMs are at all compatible with solarpunk ideals, and appears to contribute negatively towards the very problems solarpunk is trying to solve.
well of course, but this argument could be extended to the use of just about any technology (ethics of mining, reality of elecitricty etc.) and also most societal structures (opressive, classist, racist, sexist, whatever). but then how do you actually olve those problems? i say: not inside some void vacuum and some clean perfect solution. no, you step through the mud to get to the other side!
Yes, and part of solarpunk is about trying not to perpetuate those things as much as possible, which collectively makes a difference. That’s why Solarpunk advocates for degrowth (avoiding unnecessary consumption, repairing instead of buying new, gift and library economies), trying to avoid as much electricity and fossil fuel consumption as much as possible (using an public transport or an ebike where viable instead of a car, utilizing solar energy where possible), reducing meat consumption as much as possible to avoid unnecessary animal suffering and climate emissions, and to try to build the world we want to live in within the shell of the old through prefigurative politics.
Not everyone will be able to do those things 100%, but it is absolutely still worthwhile to do what they can to whatever degree is feasible.
Corporate AI use in particular is the easiest of all of those things to avoid using outside of a tech job that may enforce its use. If someone chooses to hand wave the harmful externalities it causes just because it feels convenient, then how are we to address any of the other problems humanity faces, which will generally require bigger lifestyle changes? All of us choosing to use it also sends the others looking at our movement that we are a “Do as I say, not as I do” group, who give lip service to trying to solve things while being unwilling to actually put our actions where I values claim to be.
We are ultimately incredibly unlikely to build the world we want to live in by directly funding the very people who most wish to oppress us and stop our efforts, who would see the world burn to a cinder without blinking an eye.
I’d really recommend checking out some of the links I provided in my first comment to fully grasp the scale of the problem that corporate AI is, and how supporting it by its use is incredibly self defeating.
Of course we wish to break the cycle. So how do we step out of it? Busses still use oil. Solar energy is still dependent on violent exploitation of the earth. If you choose to go vegan, you’ll likely still need monocultural practices to sustain yourselves. I’m not saying those steps dont matter. They do, they really do - what I’m saying is we’re going to be in the gray no matter what. No right life in the wrong one and all that.
I’d also take to demystifying those corporations: there’s some in there that are as evil and self serving in there as you are suggesting. However, or so I like to believe, many there do wish to create tools to create a quote unquote better world.Honor those honest people and forget about the control freak of a greedy ceo. I think it’s about taking the good from that and leaving the bad behind. We mustn’t fall for binary narratives. AI = bad is simply overly simplistic. When I use AI, it feels like what you’re describing: I’m trying. Trying to play the hand I’ve been dealt. What else can I do?
I tried unlearning everything and getting right to the root.
Then, how do we pull the root? Perhaps, yes, we must leave everything behind and opt for some sort of primitivism; but even there we’d need a gradual shift. If we were to abandon monoculture today, most of us would simply starve. The soil is destroyed, we are dependent on this system. Of course this is no cause to feel defeated and gives no right to rest the case and say: well, it is what it is and it will be what it was.
But we need to also be honest as to how deeply entangled in all of this we are. Otherwise, we’ll also never puzzle our way out of this mess.
And just as public transport and renewable energies and like bio grains are part of this process of going one incomplete and still sort of fucked up step after the other, I don’t see how AI with its undeniably emancipatory possibility can’t be part of that as well. You don’t need a big team of well-paid engineers anymore to get actually functional shit of the ground anymore and that is frankly exciting! There’s another side to it as well, one of dependence and cognitive-creative outsourcing to some revered god-like creation, there’s no denying that. But there are at the very least these two sides to it, and to pretend that this possibly positive part doesn’t exist is denying reality.
One last note on degrowth: there are, propably, very different paths available as well. I think it has lots to do witg meditation, fasting, dance and music and art and communal healing. This is the long road, I feel. But we find ourselves in isolates times indeed, hidden in our circuit castles, and so on circuits we dance until we see fresh air again! Maybe I should forget about tech alltogether. In fact, I considered it deeply these past few weeks. Mostly because of what you’re saying in terms of not wanting to contribute to the problem. Now, I don’t draw that problem line at AI… for me it has more so to do with the paradigms powering computing more generally that I sort of detest: quantification, normalization, tabularization, beaurocratication… But I guess I’ve got decent tolerance of ambiguity. As much as I philosophically criticize those ideas: they are powerful indeed and I’m not sure I’m strong enough to not compromise with them. Know your enemies better than your friends. They work. Maybe I don’t want to work. Not in that way, anyway. Maybe I just wish to contemplate and disattach from worldy ambitions. Maybe I just want to be with friends, birds, and plants. Maybe, being so close to “the enemy” turns you into one yourself. Maybe, however, there might not be any enemy after all. Must we always look at the world through antagonistic dualism? If only I could tell what road to take, for me personally but also for humanity at large! Anyway, at this point I really am rambling. Perhaps we can sort some of this out though :-)
Busses are quickly becoming EV powered, which when combined with a renewable grid, make them certainly a far better option climate wise. Ideally we would also advocate for solarpunk urbanism, which heavily encourages walkable and bikeable cities combined with electric trains/trams as much as is possible.
Even just monoculture veganism would be a substantial win for the climate (and animal suffering). However there are also non-monoculture ways of farming as well, as well as urban farming, which shows good promise.
IMHO that’s a thought terminating cliche, a way to continue to use harmful tools without it causing too much cognitive dissonance. Or in other words, it’s something we cab choose to tell ourselves so we don’t feel as bad about it.
Without meaning to offend, that is a very naive view of how corporations and CEOs operate, as they all ultimately are beholden to profit over all else.
…Not use it? Like you and everyone else would’ve had to do just a few years ago before LLMs existed.
Solarpunk is not compatible with primitivsim, nor do we advocate for it (as that would only bring untold suffering and death).
Solarpunk is an attempt to be as logical and realistic at balancing having a habitable and stable climate and habitat with an appropriate and non-ecologically damaging use of technology to achieve maximal individual and collective freedom and happiness. If you haven’t you may want to read our “What is Solarpunk?” wiki article to have a better idea of what we’re striving for.
For the reasons mentioned before, it is genuinely in direct opposition to building a solarpunk or habitable world.
“Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.” ― Frank Herbert, Dune
Being more communal, having human connections, the other things you describe are all good, fostering community is essential to building the world we want, but there is also a hard physical reality that we are extremely close to making the planet’s ecology completely collapse due to our dependence and addiction to fossil fuels, meat, and now the tools that only further empower the very people who ensure those addictions continue until it is too late to reverse on any meaningful human time scale, and at that point all we will have left is our dances as the planet crumbles.
Collectively we can’t just keep taking the easy path because it feels good and doesn’t require us to feel like we’re missing out, otherwise there will be no future for our children to inherit.
It might feel good to see the AI make a somewhat functional app quickly, but it’s important to keep in mind the external cost to have that done quickly. Was it truly worth funding the billionaires that wish to enslave us further? Will that app be worth it 10 years from now if all our lives are made miserable from fascists rising to power with the aid of AI surveillance? When our family members are imprisoned, deported or killed, where healthcare is inaccessible to most, and we all seek ways to numb ourselves as the world burns around us?
We have to keep in focus what we are enabling by taking that easy route, and the suffering we may cause to ourselves and others in the future by not taking a stand while we can.
You are in violation of Codeberg’s ToS if it is vibe coded.
i’m aware and already considering where to move it to. really dont want github. perhaps git.gay ? you got any recommendations?
My recommendation would be to not vibe code 🤷
why not?
It produces unmaintainable code that is of dubious legality aside from a whole lot of other reasons why LLMs are doing more harm than good.
No such thing as maintainable code ;) Outlaw living I guess - or, at the very least in my book, the legal system needs to be overcome anyways and thus not taken too seriously. Behaving well and playing by the rules serves but the status quo.
I do like the idea of a map to collect growing and gardening information but I won’t touch anything where LLMs are used.
If your project is worth it you can structure the general idea with pen and paper, and then let some of the many recently laid off programmers loose on it. But you said it, the main problem is that you need a ‘we’ first.
if you interact with tech/society at all, you’re going to be close to LLM’S by proxy. and of course theres lots of spam and hype surrounding them, but there’s also very legit use cases for them. esp for what you just described: that’s literally what i’ve done, only, ofc, to have ai handle that instead of people. in this day and age, how do you reckon are people going to approach coding that anyways? theres many cases in which i think letting ai near it would be devastating; having it write some basic GUI i think is a good use case for it if you don’t happen to have a whole team behind you. ofc you can bring up ecological costs; but then - thats something you have to take on even if you forbid AI entirely. 2-3 queries vs 8-10 hrs of programming work where there is some PC on, music playing, perhaps some heavy IDE on, 15-30 online searches… its not like these things are free either. so what i come back to: why wouldn’t you touch that stuff? if the code it produces is reviewed - as it is in this case, i have personally checked every single line of code i’ve uploades - like… the capabilties of these tools are plain and simply amazing. there’s no denying that. theres no denying either that data centers can be problematic. but then i guess we’ve got to choose our poison. i tried to be a seclusive hermit and renounce all society: that didnt work out well for me. if we want to act in this world it seems we need to compromise to some degree. and to me, personally, i think ai could greatly contribute to technological emancipation if used responsibly. as i said, i think its mostly a matter of where, when, how and why you use it.
You could start working on the ‘we’ first - find someone with the skills to write the code for your idea. Find people who can help you bring your project alive. Community is not only an important part, it’s the central part of your project - so there’s no advantage for you and the project in skipping this step.
Yes, we are all entangled in energy-intensive technology - but that is something I want to reduce! So for me the start for a project like you describe would be meeting the neighbours, see what they are growing, and documenting this in the way that is available to me - could be an calc sheet, or even just paper and pen. Only when there is enough information to warrant better organization would I want to consider the need for code, also because before engaging with actual people I would be very unsure what is important and how to organize it well.
Society has been gradually moving from creating stuff with substance to creating stuff with shiny surfaces - and too often software and especially vibecoding play into this. The actual information becomes unimportant, presentation becomes everything. I feel that in order to return to substance we have to look at all tech with a very critical eye, just use what we really can’t do without, and avoid adding shiny new stuff wherever we can.
Now I’m still interested in your project and I’m sure you would find other people who do the coding part for or with you - so please don’t be discouraged by the anti-AI-backlash but maybe see if there’s another way to get this off the ground.