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 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.