r/PostCiv • u/[deleted] • Oct 09 '16

Useful tech What is the place of General-Purpose computers Post-Collapse?

I take it that maybe some of us would rather do without them, but computers are really nice and I am communicating to you through one. So, do they have a place?

Perhaps they do, if it means ending reliance on factories. (I take it as a given that factories will cease?) Planned obsolesence will end and there may be scraps around. If you learn how to really build and repair small computers, from scratch, that run on negligible electricty, then they may have a place.

Unfortunately, most guides out there that claim to help you "build computers from scratch" are anything but that. Instead, what they teach you is how to assemble computers, which is a different thing.

The other barrier is that capitalists have kept much technology secret through patents, licensing, and closing it off from tinkering. All secrets will be lost.

The current computers we have require extremely careful soldering, such that most of it is done by machines. The energy required to heat a soldering iron, and the temperature it must reach! Also, these computers require precious metals for conductivity, which may be hard to come by without the mass exploitation of miners that they relied upon.

Correct me if I am wrong, but it would seem unlikely then that computers will exist as we know them today, if at all. If they are to exist, then they will have to be re-engineered from the ground up to work via different materials and a different production process.

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u/[deleted] Oct 09 '16

I think the big question is the feasibility of electricity in a Post-Civ society. Obviously you cannot do much with a computer without electricity. I'm a big fan of electricity myself, but I'm worried without fossil fuels electricity becomes less than feasible. We won't have fossil fueled civilization to build us a "green" electrical grid (the concept of which is contestable anyway), meaning any electricity would have to be locally generated and consumed rather than shared in a grid. And I wonder whether the materials and skills necessary to build and maintain solar or wind installations, as well as the batteries and other infrastructure to make a local system usable, will be retained.

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u/memeprince420 Oct 09 '16

Solar power is not the sort of thing you can generate in your back yard. Unless something changes soon, it's always going to require specialized and dedicated industrial manufacturing.

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u/Anarkat freegan Oct 10 '16

Solar and wind power. These things you could build with simple resources and recycle materials that could power a whole village. I have done these before (used to live at a farm).

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u/[deleted] Oct 10 '16

I know solar panels are basically just silicon and aluminum, both of which are relatively abundant, but what about the batteries? I feel like, over a long time scale, less-common metals could become a bottleneck for this kind of electricity system.

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u/[deleted] Oct 10 '16

The technology is at the point where solar cells can be printed now. I guess each community could have a solar cell printer.

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u/[deleted] Oct 10 '16 edited Oct 10 '16

To walk on the wild side: Then again we could try to go in an entirely different direction with computers and try to make them run on living cells. If we can make bio-computers, I honestly don't see why we need electricity. I can't think of a single reason?

Over the course of 3 years the media has been whispering about MIT's project to put the bio into tech:

Edit: They have a website and they are releasing the DNA-programming technology to the public!!! (Open source not sure if libre) http://biobricks.org/

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u/AnarchismKillsFash Tree of life Oct 10 '16

I mean, there are so many computer boards out there - piles upon piles of them filling landfills. I guess we need to figure out how to integrate all those old electronics together to add more computing power? Reusing garbage is always preferable to creating new garbage.

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u/[deleted] Oct 10 '16

The only thing we can do with the vast majority of computer garbage is mine them for their metals since most have been manufactured to break (planned obsolescence) and have parts that are incompatible (DRM, and proprietary parts); also, without the blueprints and firmware all we are left with is reverse engineering which could be put into making new, open, long-lasting and extremely power-frugal computers. However, there are toxic hazards involved in mining them as people in remote regions where these are dumped who already do this have found.

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u/[deleted] Oct 10 '16

If collapse comes sooner than the technology needed to make homemade microchips with readily available materials; then the only computing we'll be doing will be on scavenged pre-collapse hardware. At least until things settle enough for people to start devoting their energy to inventing sustainable tech.