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Cyberdecks, going analog, and convivial technology

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Re: Cyberdecks, going analog, and convivial technology

#71

Post by mapontosevenths »

wossab wrote: post #64
ma2kx wrote: post #54

What keeps going through my mind regarding this topic is that we have Instagram for pictures, YouTube for videos, Reddit as a forum, Twitter/Bsky as a microblogging service, and so on. But what if we focused on locality again? What if each city/region had its own virtual meeting place for pictures, videos, forums, microblogging, and so forth? I don't mean a "super app" that simply divides things regionally, but rathe…

I live in a village with 2.000 people and about 25 common Whatsapp channels. And it is hell. Sometimes, you really don't want to interact with your neighbors beyond the courtesy "hello". These people don't have anything in common with you, other than your coordinates on the map. That's no basis for a functional community in the online sense.

Exactly."Local only" sounds like a good idea to people who were born after the internet turned us all into a global village. People who remember bulletin board systems that were mostly limited to your own area code often have a different take.

To me, it feels like we already tried not being able to talk to people who were far away from us once already, and what it did was lead to cultures dominated by the most popular view. Uncommon and unpopular voices were marginalized to the edges (at best - sometimes they were met with violence and bullying) and often ignored completely. If you were on the fringe, you either didn't have anyone to talk to or had to befriend the one other person within 25 miles with a similar quirk.

Is it bad that the internet has amplified the voices of every fringe group to ridiculous volumes? Sure. On the other hand, people in the US people use the terms "black neighborhood" and "white neighborhood"? That's what staying local gets you. Local only was gross then, and it's gross now.

Re: Cyberdecks, going analog, and convivial technology

#72

Post by imthias404 »

At the end of the day, the very system you claim to oppose will ultimately profit from this "movement."

I am not trying to look down on a hobby. Building cyberdecks is cool, and it's a great learning experience, but it's not a movement.

Other than being a fun project, a cyberdeck serves no practical purpose and lacks any real daily driving application. It sparks no actual rebellion. it's just a product not the revolution. but i wish it was, i genuinely wish people would just show the finger to big corporations.

Re: Cyberdecks, going analog, and convivial technology

#73

Post by QuesnayJr »

y1n0 wrote: post #43

I think these things are interesting, but I grew up on neuromancer...and so I have some cognitive dissonance when I see these described as cyberdecks and see screens. I get that the term has moved on, and cyberdeck means whatever people say it means now. But to me, these are just novel retro diy laptops. I think given today's technology you could sort of a approximate a cyberdeck with some low end ar/vr glasses like…

Someone said to me yesterday "I'm thinking about building my own cyberdeck" and I boggled, because the only meaning I knew was the Neuromancer one.

Re: Cyberdecks, going analog, and convivial technology

#74

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

sandcat_ wrote: post #31
nl wrote: post #25

I read the article and sadly I think the author missed a key thing that is going on. Yes, there are few people who created cyberdecks as a counter-culture, anti-company tool (which is a lot of what the author argues). But some of the newer ones they highlight are nothing more than engagement farming reels. They are the very definition of the opposite of what the author writes here: > We want to escape the algorithmic…

Are you sure this isn’t just because it’s the “wrong” people who are building them? Instead of the typical (older) FOSS/geek/whatever crowd? It feels overly negative to me. People, mostly younger people, are building them, tinkering with them and are excited to post about them. Is it any surprise they’re doing so on TikTok or wherever? Yes, it’s a little ironic considering the anti-big-tech vibes mentioned in the art…

There's nothing particularly technologically counterculture or transgressive about running a stock Raspberry Pi using stock Raspberry Pi OS or, worse, an x86 PC. If anything, it's a mirror of the modern world: a garish, tasteless surface layer of individuality concealing conformity and helpless dependence on "the man" within.

Bunnie Huang's Precursor project was a genuine act of rebellion against the locked down nature of modern computing. These cyberdecks are tacky cosplay accessories for adults.

Re: Cyberdecks, going analog, and convivial technology

#76

Post by RansomStark »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #20
yummypaint wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For general compute they will lose to a laptop, but that isn't supposed to be their purpose. I think the best use cases require extra hardware that would make a laptop too bulky or awkward. For example a deck with a VNA, SDR, scope, and arbitrary waveform generator for field work with radio equipment. The traditional computer capabilities are sort of extra. Any sort of diagnostic "cart" with a dedicated computer and…

> " For example a deck with a VNA, SDR, scope, and arbitrary waveform generator for field work with radio equipment. " Any real world examples? I don't think that's plausible from a RFI, power, heat, or just plain fragility perspective even with the cheapo hobbyist instruments suitable for kitbashing and only energizing a couple of instruments a time.

There's a bunch of SDR cyberdecks, there's a few that both lots more.

Take a look at this one:

https://hackaday.io/project/174301-raspberry-pi-sdr-cyberdec...

Or this one:

https://hackaday.io/project/192016-the-obsium-cyberdeck

Or take a look at what saveitforparts does on youtube

Re: Cyberdecks, going analog, and convivial technology

#77

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

RansomStark wrote: post #76
ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> " For example a deck with a VNA, SDR, scope, and arbitrary waveform generator for field work with radio equipment. " Any real world examples? I don't think that's plausible from a RFI, power, heat, or just plain fragility perspective even with the cheapo hobbyist instruments suitable for kitbashing and only energizing a couple of instruments a time.

There's a bunch of SDR cyberdecks, there's a few that both lots more. Take a look at this one: https://hackaday.io/project/174301-raspberry-pi-sdr-cyberdec... Or this one: https://hackaday.io/project/192016-the-obsium-cyberdeck Or take a look at what saveitforparts does on youtube

An RTL-SDR for the SDR and a Raspberry Pi Pico based "oscilloscope" just reinforces the extent to which these devices aren't practical.

Re: Cyberdecks, going analog, and convivial technology

#78

Post by backscratches »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #11
ideasphere wrote: post #2

Cyberdecks are nice for photos and build blog posts, but does anyone actually regularly use them?

Been working on a handheld cyberdeck with a good thumb keyboard. I'm masochistic enough to write entire projects on my smartphone with vim running inside termux, so I think anything that improves on this will certainly be used. Measured my thumb's swiping arc and designed a split keyboard specifically for my hands. Managed to get every symbol in there with no layers. Now I just need to save up some money and order pr…

Are you documenting the process anywhere? Also dying for a good thumb keyboard someday.

Re: Cyberdecks, going analog, and convivial technology

#79

Post by tsylba »

palmotea wrote: post #33

> Cyberdecks are changing for the better > 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. > In my own view, cyberdecks have remained popular because of hacker culture. And all of the cultur…

The whole piece feel like vibe farming by some youngling piecing together part of the hacker culture as seen by the media in the 90s with some reddit or vintage tumblr trends on top. I resonated with a lot of themes it tries to capture but it ends up looking more like a teen trying to commodify a subculture in a performative way rather than a real tentative alternative to the system, as we saw every generation or so.

I'm all in for lowtech, degrowth, permacomputing, Bookchin municipalism and Illich like "tools for conviviality" but here it seems.. candid and non genuine.

Re: Cyberdecks, going analog, and convivial technology

#80

Post by asdff »

goldenarm wrote: post #56
ma2kx wrote: post #54

What keeps going through my mind regarding this topic is that we have Instagram for pictures, YouTube for videos, Reddit as a forum, Twitter/Bsky as a microblogging service, and so on. But what if we focused on locality again? What if each city/region had its own virtual meeting place for pictures, videos, forums, microblogging, and so forth? I don't mean a "super app" that simply divides things regionally, but rathe…

Local social is one of the most attempted startup ideas of the 2010s. It is quite challenging because network effects are hard to reach at the local scale, and you need significant moderation to prevent bullying.

A big issue is the NextDoor effect. The most prolific posters are going to be people who saw a black person walking around and are startled by it and posting about it. Sane people see that and leave.
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