[awongh]

It's extremely hard for me to separate where we are now from the way that Moore's law dictates a pretty insane level of planned obsolescence for chips and therefore everything with a chip in it.

If we make batteries replaceable or whatever other thing, how much do we change this fundamental dynamic? I feel like it's not very much.

People are kidding themselves if they think somehow recycling ewaste or reusing your last-model iPhone is some kind of sea-change that will fix the environmental impacts of tech.

It also doesn't seem defensible to say we should just slow progress down- isn't that a world where we never get iPhones and AI? How could a computing field that moves slower than Moore's law even work?

I dislike a lot of these wasteful dynamics but I also don't know what the alternative is. Consumer tech and computing is still the poster child for the proponents of global free market economics for good reason. It's one of the least extractive, least wasteful, highest profit margin sectors of the economy.

It's just saying a lot about how wasteful the other sectors are that tech is so wasteful.

[zahlman]

> How could a computing field that moves slower than Moore's law even work?

Moore's Law has been breaking down for years already (to the point that people shift the goalposts as to what the actual quantity is that improves exponentially), so it's strange to ask. There are known physical limits that will prevent it from continuing indefinitely; and we aren't even that far away, to my understanding.

[awongh]

Moore's law is ending but the power laws of increased capacity and capability of computing in general continues at a similar rate- so this isn't a question of the specific technology of how many transistors you can fit in a given area.

Moore's law is just a stand-in for the planned obsolescence of all computing related things almost since computers were invented, and the fundamental tech question is always, when thing x gets 10x cheaper/faster, what new use case gets unlocked? Right now it's AI model capability. Maybe also battery tech.

The idea of the slow growth of computing smells to me like the Bill Gates quote about 640k of RAM being enough for anyone.

[scared_together]

> How could a computing field that moves slower than Moore's law even work?

We’ll probably find out soon, because even ignoring the environmental concerns there is a limit to how small transistors can get.

[dwaltrip]

Let's pick one example: E-waste.

It’s a negative externality.

We can argue about the magnitude and the details, but the basic fact remains.

There are ways of dealing with negative externalities. Some work better than others. The details do matter a lot. And we definitely need better ways of tackling problems like this, especially when the cost is less immediate. The more diffuse, temporally removed, downstream, hidden, or controversial it is, the harder it is to get people to take the problem seriously. Let alone actually do anything about it.

We can take on these challenges. Or we can largely ignore them / throw our hands in the air, and watch the consequences unfold.

As much as we are able to, I’d like to try the former. Computing can still move forward and innovate at a rapid rate.

[awongh]

We should definitely be doing better, and it's also clear that these negative externalities are not being priced in at all.

I do and would want to buy tech that I'm not coerced into to throwing away after a year. It's insane to be how many objects today have batteries that are sealed inside and are meant to be thrown away after- that should be regulated.

But that seems to me to be an implementation detail rather than aspect that's worthy of an entire manifesto.

I do think the political aspects of things like Ring and Flock cameras and Palantir are super important (the reenforcing of existing power structures part).

But I don't get the folding in of this idea that not consuming computing devices is part of the solution- Like I said, it feels like the planned obsolescence of all computing devices and software is fundamental to the field.

[2snakes]

Can we combine centrifuge element extraction with metal shredders? Crush all that ewaste and then make some things from it: recycling loop.

[HerbManic]

> It also doesn't seem defensible to say we should just slow progress down- isn't that a world where we never get iPhones and AI?

Honestly, that sounds kind of OK. A lot of the things I use a smart phone for are things that have been imposed on me rather than chosen.

Also if we never had smart phones I doubt social media would have such a grip on peoples minds nowadays. It would still be there but toned down a lot.