obsolescence.party

2023-08-20 It liiiives, and it's groovy

For our first project, we resuscitated a Moto G phone (c. 2015). There was nothing wrong with this phone, other than its relatively low computing power causing it to function slowly. The reason for its obsolescence was a lack of operating system updates that made it too insecure for regular use. While security updates are vital for networked devices, especially those that store personal information, an out-of-date operating system does not prohibit other uses. We began by wiping the device and performing a fresh install of the last known working version of LineageOS>

The installation process went smoothly and already this device can be used safely as a media player, either by transferring music files to the device manually via a micro USB connection to a computer, or with the built-in FM radio application. With headphones plugged into the audio jack, the phone becomes a receptacle for local radio waves.

This small and simple starting point is not a dramatic foray into the world of permacomputing. It is instead a tiny frankenstein monster. Something frozen and previously dead that can still be made to interact with the world today. We have a lot of work left to do before this can become a general recipe for others to follow. It still looks and functions identically to a modern smart phone. The lack of safety one would normally expect is hidden from the user. Our next step with this experiment is to look at what we can change, how to combine the old with the new, to make the device our own rather than a ghostly image of the past.

2023-08-09 Disassembling the mobile device

Today we began to discuss ideas around the repurposing of mobile phone technology. To start we identified the different hardware elements of the mobile phone. Every phone has a processor, memory, screen, battery and SIM Card Slot. On top of this are elements for input, output and connectivity. Inputs are the ways we interact with the device, outputs are how the device communicates back to the us, and connectivity enables the device to connect with other devices and networks. Within this we include software Elements include operating System (OS)and applications. The operating system is the software that manages the phone's hardware and provides the user interface. Common mobile operating systems include Android, iOS, and others. There are various software applications that run on the phone, from the built-in system apps to third-party apps downloaded from app stores.

We can break down the mobile phones elements as follows:

Basic elements:

Input elements:

Output elements:

Connectivity: 

Understanding the diverse components comprising a phone and their individual as well as collaborative functionalities holds significant value. Despite its apparent simplicity, this comprehension can be pivotal in unveiling the potential for repurposing mobile phones, particularly when specific components cease to operate, are unable to be e replaced, or financially unfeasible to replace. Even new devices which loose functionality of one of these elements are often discarded. In a subsequent post, we will include a concise glossary describing the fundamental purposes and operational functions of the various elements constituting mobile devices.

2023-08-07 Using sunbeams to access our vessel pi

Today we set up a raspberry pi in the vessel studio space that houses our locally hosted blog for this project. The blog will eventually go live at https://obsolescence.party in addition to this local network.

Thanks to the tools provided by the Raspberry Pi Imager, the setup was fairly quick. We had to set it up in headless mode, due to a lack of a monitor and the right kinds of cables. To do so, we used the advanced options to set a local hostname, enable SSH, and provide the SSID and password for the studio's WiFi hotspot. This mostly worked right out of the box, our only difficulty was in finding the pi on the network. We eventually found it at obsolescenceparty.home after an nmap scan, rather than the obsolescenceparty.local domain we were expecting. Our understanding is that this was due to a combination of the router's settings and lack of support for mDNS on various devices. We then installed nginx as our webserver and copied our blog's HTML and CSS files to the /var/www/html directory, and were done!

The pi is powered by a small solar charger, and as a result our website is only accessible if the panel is placed in full sun. Those with physical access to the vessel space can view our blog by positioning the raspberry pi and panel, connecting to the vessel WiFi, and then visiting http://obsolescenceparty.home in their browser.

While we eventually plan to host our website publicly, this intermediate step of a time-of-day and location dependent local hosting is an important experimentation with permacomputing principles that also allows us to share our progress with the vessel space.

2023-08-06 Descent into, designing for

Today’s readings were informed by a quick online search of the term collapse computing, an idea referenced in the permacomputing blog and defined by it as follows.

“...the study, design, and development of sociotechnical systems in the abundant present for use in a future of scarcity. Civilizational or technological collapse is an extreme example of such a future.” The term "Collapse informatics" was coined by Bill Tomlinson in 2013.”

Collapse computing is strongly connected to a future of scarcity, an idea along with the counter condition of post-scarcity, that has been explored by various thinkers over the years. Both perspectives explore the availability of future resources and technology to sustain life of populations and its relationship with economic and social systems.

Collapse informatics is based on the understanding that technical systems are likely to collapse in part or completely due to issues with resources caused by environmental, societal or economic collapse. In these future scenarios the ability to manufacture or maintain computing resources could be hugely limited  and lead to an [unplanned obsolescence]. (https://kurti.sh/pubs/unplanned_limits17.pdf) In line with the principles of permaculture, collapse computing proposes the need to build resilient systems that respond to unplanned obsolescence which forefront resource efficiency, simplicity and flexibility. For example, designing future systems which are resilient to intermittent energy supply or network connectivity. Collapse computing also supports the need to repurpose parts, increase the repairability of devices, and increase hardware longevity. As one blog writes,” Nothing new needs producing and no e-waste needs processing.”

In our discussion we both concurred that definitive assumptions about future conditions which collapse computing takes as its starting point can be misleading. However as we have done in past projects we are keen to explore speculative futures. Applying collapse computing to present and inline with the principles of permacomputing, what is most interesting is its emphasis on systems which are lightweight, minimal and modular than can run on various technological devices and therefore reduce the obsolescence of devices.

One such project with these attributes central to it is Collapse OS, an operating system built with the primary purpose to facilitate programming and running software on low tech and obsolete hardware.

Another blog (https://wiki.xxiivv.com/site/collapse_computing.html) highlights collapse computing way to prioritise community needs and contribute to the commons.

2023-08-04 Software rot and cyborg frankensteins vs zombies

Our reading this morning was on the basic principles of permacomputing from permacomputing.net. In it are several themes that we'd like to focus on for this project, along with some tensions with the media archaeology reading from yesterday. It's interesting to approach our experimentation with mobile phones in the context of permacomputing because the mobile phone ecosystem is in most ways the opposite of what permaculture is trying to achieve. Mobile phones are complicated, proprietary, rely on dependencies that quickly go out of date and are not maintained, lock away functionality from the user, require a massive amount of resources to create, and require an ever increasing amount of computational resources to use in the mainstream way.

However, from our starting point with our collection of "obsoleted" devices and software, we see a path towards the dissassembly, restructuring, experimentation, simplification, and repurposing of this technology that is very much in line with permacomputing principles. To quote from the read, "everything has a place".

One of the main causes of software rot in the mobile phone ecosystem is the unsolid ground of complex monokernel operating systems and proprietary firmware that quickly becomes unmaintained by manufacturers, and through a chain of events causes devices to become obsolete due to an inability to obtain software updates. Firmware must be constantly updated to keep in line with new kernel APIs exposed by the operating system, which in the case of Android and other AOSP-based operating systems, is linux. As linux changes over time, so must AOSP to maintain performance improvements and security updates, and therefore so must mobile phone firmware keep up-to-date with the new kernel.

Solidifying the base on which mobile devices are built and function is an intensive technological task. We aspire to explore reverse engineering techniques to produce open-source specifications of obsolete firmware, and also investigate micro kernel OS alternatives to linux and stock Android. However, a more accessible first step towards repurposing obsolete devices is to simply stop trying to update the operating system of a mobile device. One of the main problems with devices that don't receive updates is the security risk, but if the device is no longer used in the expected way of smartphones (i.e., as networked devices that send and store personal information), then there are options for their safe use in other ways.

While the permacomputing principles denounce zombie media as a reinforcement of industry-defined media death, we see this technique of bringing new life to mobile phones through the freeze of rotted software more as a frankenstein than a zombie. Our goal is to bring to life something new through safe and careful excisions of the still-functioning pieces left to us by the old owners and designers of these systems.

2023-08-03 Undusting devices

Our initial reading introduced us to Jussi Parikka's book, "What is Media Archaeology?" (2012), which serves as a guiding exploration of the theory and methodology of media archaeology—an interdisciplinary field that approaches media "archaeologically" in contemporary culture. Media archaeologists are interested in investigating the materiality of media technologies and their historical contexts. They seek to uncover and understand the ways in which these obsolete technologies contributed to the development of contemporary media cultures and how media shape cultural and social significance. The introduction of Parikka's work discusses the theoretical foundations of the field and highlights the distinctions between media archaeology, traditional media history, and cultural studies.

Within this work, several concepts stand out and resonate with our project. But we first found synergy through the chapter's references to steampunk. Relevant to the notion of obsolescence is the exploration of the intricate relationship between time and technology. The "media-archaeological spirit" encourages us to consider both old and new media in parallel, drawing from the past to gain new perspectives on contemporary media cultures. It invites us to explore the temporal dimensions of technologies—their emergence, evolution, obsolescence, and afterlives. It challenges linear notions of technological progress, highlighting the entanglements between past, present, and future in media. An approach which opens up an avenue of looking at and understanding obsolete technologies not as artefacts from the past but as artefacts "out of time" or "anew,” anachronistic technology. By studying multiple coexisting possibilities, we can emphasise how obsolete media technologies and practices continue to resonate with the present.

Media archaeology looks deeply at the social and historical context from which media technologies emerge. This perspective recognizes that media are not merely products of technological determinism but are significantly shaped by human agency, needs, and imaginaries. We discussed if a genealogy of the mobile phone could help us in understanding how their features have been removed or added. How do these adaptations relate to social desires or those of capitalism? An interesting point suggests not considering features of technology but viewing technology though negotiations between audiences, between experts and amateurs, insiders and outsiders, society and the state, etc.

Media Archaeology proposes the unearthing and creation of counter histories. Drawing inspiration from steampunk the field emphasises a do-it-yourself and do-it-together approach to technology, including practices like tinkering, hacker culture, and open-source development. Obsolescence.party hopes to find ways to empower individuals to repair, repurpose, and reimagine their devices, creating more space for pluralities, counter narratives, and radical futures of devices. Further research in Media archeology could help us explore ways to approach this and uncover traces of mobile phone history that lie outside the mainstream paradigm, shifting our focus away from dominant narratives of the ubiquitous device to counter histories that have gone unnoticed.