Salvage Computing

Something a lot of the other terms in the Catalog have in common is an emphasis on resource minimalism and repair, yet many communities trying to lower their environmental footprint are currently seeking this minimalism in hardware that is very hard to repair and is newly produced ¹. Salvage computing is a response to this hype of small low-power single-board computers, aware of the resulting production of yet more electronics while the world is swimming in e-waste ². Devine Lu Linvega, one of the voices of the solarpunk merveilles.town Mastodon instance, proposes that creating software targeting old hardware might be a better approach ³. Gemini creator Solderpunk thinks along similar lines when writing "the real long-term future of computing consists of figuring out how to make the best possible use we can out of the literal millions of devices which already exist" ⁴. Sociologist Jennifer Gabrys describes salvage as a practice of engaging with the discarded "with an eye to transforming what is exhausted and wasted into renewed resources" ⁵. She adds the important observation that this process also means engaging with the conditions that led to disrepair.

Information technology (IT) requires immense amounts of resources and energy: metals, rare earth minerals, water, silicon, and plastics, as well as fossil fuels for their extraction, transport, production, utilisation, and disposal. The use phase of many electronic items represents the smallest part of the total energy consumption across their lifespan. Production and disposal weigh heaviest on the planet. This burden is unequally distributed. While the Global North is the biggest consumer of IT, the Global South is where most of the mining, production, and disposal of hardware takes place ⁶. Salvage computing reduces damage through hardware repair, the development and maintenance of open-source software for older devices ⁷, and political action in the form of lobbying policy makers to introduce regulations that enable these practices ⁸.

The Right to Repair movement, the Restart project, repair cafes, iFixit and U-Fix-It are all targeted at making devices last longer but with the exception of the Right to Repair movement, do not focus on the conditions that led to disrepair: planned obsolescence, the rapid upgrade-or-die cycle of the tech industry and consumer capitalism in general, not to mention the impact of this on the Global South, which is receiving the West’s e-waste and suffers from the pollution caused by the production of the Global North’s technology. Out of precarity, and because of the ongoing impact of colonialism, there are very rich and creative repair practices in existence—Jugaad, Gambiarra, Resolver, Shanzhai. Because of the sudden attention in the West to e-waste and supply chains, these practices of improvisation are appropriated and fetishized, yet as architectural historian Ginger Nolan argues, the romanticizing of the inventiveness of these practices can function as an excuse to keep economic instability and precarity in place ⁹. Media theorist and art historian Shannon Mattern raises the question whether repair is about conserving the status quo or about inciting systemic change ¹⁰. She argues for critical repair, that questions normative uses and the values embedded in those norms and compares the scale on which repair practices operate with that of the climate crisis:

"Maybe 'repair' itself is too modest an intervention for planetary-scale injuries. Maybe what’s required is abolition, the building of new, 'life-affirming' alternatives." ¹¹

At this moment, computing is so pervasive, the search for new and life-affirming alternatives needs to go hand in hand with reducing the environmental and social harms of mainstream computing. Without romanticizing these practices or ignoring the conditions leading to disrepair, making do with existing and already produced technology saves a lot of resources simply because nothing new needs producing and no e-waste needs processing. Keeping up with the latest developments in hardware and software is not affordable for most, globally, and therefore excludes the disadvantaged from participation in using software services and software that requires recently produced hardware. This exclusion puts the already marginalized at a further socio-economic disadvantage. This is a strong motivation to work on making older hardware functional for longer. Another reason is solidarity with workers in production facilities and formal as well as informal e-waste processing, who are exposed to toxic materials, hazardous working conditions and are poorly remunerated. Next to that, the environmental harm in the form of pollution, water and energy use, further endangers the health and well-being of workers and citizens living in proximity of factories, microchip fabrication plants and mining facilities. Individual abstention doesn't solve systemic problems however, necessitating a combination of strategic politics with mutual aid as complementary aspects of this practice.

Salvage computing operates at multiple interconnected scales, from strategic politics to DIY and DIWO. To make repair possible and sustainable, it has a political agenda focused on degrowth and alternative economic models. It supports demands for new laws requiring producers of electronic devices to make their products last long (planned longevity), to make them repairable, which means: modular design, production of affordable replacement parts ¹², software and firmware updates and the eventual release of those as open source software, allowing others to take over after support is no longer required by law. Salvage computing supports local repair economies, both commercial ones as well as grassroots and activist projects, from repair-shops to repair-cafes and hacklabs. This support includes the push for legalizing repair activities on proprietary hardware, as well as financial support for community projects. At the level of software development, there is a focus on open source software and operating system development for older devices. Locally as well as online, the construction of a knowledge commons on how to do repair and hands-on skill sharing can help individuals and communities looking to work with existing hardware.

Enabling factors are legislation and regulation requiring manufacturers to make devices repairable, with as a first step advocacy for right-to-repair legislation ¹³. Part of this should be enforcing manufacturers to use universal components, connection standards and interchangeable parts such as USB to ensure current and future compatibility between devices ¹⁴. Making restricting end-user license agreements and the criminalization of third-party repair illegal is an important step ¹⁵. If repairing is not an option, reusing a device in a different way than its intended purpose, is another path, requiring a shift in lifestyle choices; one from wanting to possess the latest gadget to one in which it is desirable to own a device for a long time, rather than associating this with poverty ¹⁶. Blevis et al. call this New Luxury, where products are considered luxurious because they are of high quality and standard, not because they are expensive ¹⁷. Heirloom computing is a related term, that expresses the desire for long lasting computing hardware that could be passed down from generation to generation ¹⁸. On the software-side enabling factors are creating software targeting old hardware, requiring developers to test their software on older devices, to push back against software 'progress' deprecating still functioning hardware. Roura et al. point to a need for a different bookkeeping practice, one that does not devalue devices faster than their actual lifespan, creating the idea of valueless items that will trigger institutions and companies to purchase new devices instead ¹⁹.

Other enabling factors are skill-sharing, documentation of repairs and the sharing of that documentation. This includes the support of social networks and institutions interested in computer repair, invaluable for sourcing parts and maintaining the skills needed for successful repair culture ²⁰. An example of an online community documenting repairs to consumer electronics, including computers and smart phones, is iFixit ²¹. The Restart Project, a UK based organisation that started in 2013, is organising repair events across the UK and internationally. The project also lobbies for the Right to Repair in the UK and Europe. Lastly, in the Netherlands, many city councils have started repair cafés that welcome citizens to bring their broken devices in for repair in community centers. The Repair Café initiative was started in 2009 by journalist and activist Martine Postma in Amsterdam. Today, there are about 2000 cafés worldwide. Next to these grassroots initiatives, there is also a lively commercial smartphone repair culture consisting of small shops, also extending into hacklabs and fablabs, with an associated ecosystem of sourcing spare parts and skill sharing; unauthorized, sometimes very creative and often illegal interventions ²².

Computer scientists Barath Raghavan and Shaddi Hasan acknowledge a salvaged Internet cannot be sustained in the long-term ²³. Still, considering today’s urgent need to shrink consumption of resources, it is surprising to see that from the list—refuse, reduce, reuse, repair and recycle the last one is the most wasteful, yet has gotten most attention. This emphasis on recycling can only be explained because the other three point to economic degrowth, an unpopular topic in mainstream politics to date. This, again, shows the importance of a political agenda, next to design and praxis.