#decomputing — Public Fediverse posts

It questions automation and algorithmic decision-making. Decomputing opens space for simpler, more human-centered ways of thinking and acting.

Learn more about the festival’s themes and selected program points in the second episode of AMRO on Air 2026 with Davide Bevilacqua, Joseph Knierzinger and Gabriela Gordillo. Available today at 17:00 on Radio FRO.

#AMRO2026 #BecomingUnreadable #Decomputing #linz #culture #kultur #festival #mediaarts

It questions automation and algorithmic decision-making. Decomputing opens space for simpler, more human-centered ways of thinking and acting.

Learn more about the festival’s themes and selected program points in the second episode of AMRO on Air 2026 with Davide Bevilacqua, Joseph Knierzinger and Gabriela Gordillo. Available today at 17:00 on Radio FRO.

#AMRO2026 #BecomingUnreadable #Decomputing #linz #culture #kultur #festival #mediaarts

It questions automation and algorithmic decision-making. Decomputing opens space for simpler, more human-centered ways of thinking and acting.

Learn more about the festival’s themes and selected program points in the second episode of AMRO on Air 2026 with Davide Bevilacqua, Joseph Knierzinger and Gabriela Gordillo. Available today at 17:00 on Radio FRO.

#AMRO2026 #BecomingUnreadable #Decomputing #linz #culture #kultur #festival #mediaarts

It questions automation and algorithmic decision-making. Decomputing opens space for simpler, more human-centered ways of thinking and acting.

Learn more about the festival’s themes and selected program points in the second episode of AMRO on Air 2026 with Davide Bevilacqua, Joseph Knierzinger and Gabriela Gordillo. Available today at 17:00 on Radio FRO.

#AMRO2026 #BecomingUnreadable #Decomputing #linz #culture #kultur #festival #mediaarts

It questions automation and algorithmic decision-making. Decomputing opens space for simpler, more human-centered ways of thinking and acting.

Learn more about the festival’s themes and selected program points in the second episode of AMRO on Air 2026 with Davide Bevilacqua, Joseph Knierzinger and Gabriela Gordillo. Available today at 17:00 on Radio FRO.

#AMRO2026 #BecomingUnreadable #Decomputing #linz #culture #kultur #festival #mediaarts

Glossary 5/6 - De-computing

With this glossary series, AMRO 2026 introduces concepts, terms, and practices that shape the festival’s thematic field. Rather than fixed definitions, these entries are invitations to approach shared questions through different critical vocabularies.

“De-computing” asks what happens when we reduce reliance on computational systems.

#AMRO2026 #BecomingUnreadable #Decomputing #linz #culture #kultur #festival #mediaarts

Glossary 5/6 - De-computing

With this glossary series, AMRO 2026 introduces concepts, terms, and practices that shape the festival’s thematic field. Rather than fixed definitions, these entries are invitations to approach shared questions through different critical vocabularies.

“De-computing” asks what happens when we reduce reliance on computational systems.

#AMRO2026 #BecomingUnreadable #Decomputing #linz #culture #kultur #festival #mediaarts

Glossary 5/6 - De-computing

With this glossary series, AMRO 2026 introduces concepts, terms, and practices that shape the festival’s thematic field. Rather than fixed definitions, these entries are invitations to approach shared questions through different critical vocabularies.

“De-computing” asks what happens when we reduce reliance on computational systems.

#AMRO2026 #BecomingUnreadable #Decomputing #linz #culture #kultur #festival #mediaarts

Glossary 5/6 - De-computing

With this glossary series, AMRO 2026 introduces concepts, terms, and practices that shape the festival’s thematic field. Rather than fixed definitions, these entries are invitations to approach shared questions through different critical vocabularies.

“De-computing” asks what happens when we reduce reliance on computational systems.

#AMRO2026 #BecomingUnreadable #Decomputing #linz #culture #kultur #festival #mediaarts

Glossary 5/6 - De-computing

With this glossary series, AMRO 2026 introduces concepts, terms, and practices that shape the festival’s thematic field. Rather than fixed definitions, these entries are invitations to approach shared questions through different critical vocabularies.

“De-computing” asks what happens when we reduce reliance on computational systems.

#AMRO2026 #BecomingUnreadable #Decomputing #linz #culture #kultur #festival #mediaarts

Interesting pre-print: "This paper treats #AI as diagnostic for the deeper changes taking place in the existing order of things. […] AI's scaling and accelerationism are taken as examples of the wider tactics being invoked by hegemonic power to maintain control under changing conditions. […] the massive build-out of data centres isn't simply a seizure of energy resources but a manifestation of an aggressive and misogynist technopolitics. The paper argues that a liberal push for digital #sovereignty doesn't interrupt these dynamics but plays into the hands of emerging technofascism. It proposes instead the prefigurative tactic of 'decomputing', which draws on #degrowth, deautomatisation and a #convivial approach to technology. It explores decomputing as a means to mitigate both material & relational harms and as a decisive turn towards infrastructuring the common good."

McQuillan, D. (2026). #AI, #Decomputing and the Interregnum. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18908529

https://www.danmcquillan.org/ai_decomputing_interregnum.html

RE: https://hachyderm.io/@thomasfuchs/116440570565467277

"These long-running, parallelized workflows can yield great value, but they have also challenged our infrastructure and pricing structure: it’s now common for a handful of requests to incur costs that exceed the plan price! These are our problems to solve. The actions we are taking today enable us to provide the best possible experience for existing users while we develop a more sustainable solution." — Joe Binder, VP of Product

If people are already _commonly_ exceeding set monthly quotas/costs with just a handful of requests, you all have got much bigger problems, customers/users too (i.e. becoming deeply dependent on externally controlled & rented infrastructure from day one of your project/startup, plus slowly damaging your own cognitive abilities and a fast growing maintenance nightmare)! And this all is just the beginning... 🍿

Keeping up with other news about growing mineral, energy & supply chain shortages, the illusion that this might just be very short term, and the resulting cost bumps needed to produce and provision all the outstanding data center capacities at the heart of the above decisions (and similar ones made by Anthropic just days ago), I really don't understand where this optimism of AI boosters/users is coming from or on what planet they're living on...

genAI/agenticAI is a shoddily implemented/managed/secured technology & mentality for a computing-illiterate consumerist society, for an age of infinite resource abundance with stable climate/politics, all of which we're leaving (or have never really been in)! And that departure is partially driven/accelerated by said tech...

Instead of funneling trillions into this particular tech, we need focus/investment into methods, infrastructure, research/education, relationships, and above all, a culture focused on how to make computing magnitudes more sustainable, accessible, independent and which allows us to do generally more with less. Or, at least not with magnitudes more, just for some dubious, unspecified (and meaningless) measure of improved "productivity gains"... With almost no one ever questioning what this supposed extra productivity is even good for...

#GitHub #AI #ResourceScarcity #Decomputing #HouseOfCards

"1. Decomputing is a prefigurative technopolitics,
2. which tries to enact changed relations in the here-and-now.
3. One organisational form for this is worker's and people's councils on AI.
4. These are self-constituting assemblies that push back against AI bullshit,
5. while using consensus and critical pedagogy to tackle the divisive binaries we've all been programmed with.
6. Because universities are on the AI frontline, we're seeing resistance popping up all over the place.
7. Solidarity is the first priority of any of these critical collectives.
8. Some of the questions facing this emerging movement more broadly are:
9. how to move beyond reformism with minimum wasted energy and burn-out
10. how to coordinate and develop strategies without imposing rigid structure
11. how to position the push against AI as part of a movement-of-movements,
12. as part of an ecology of infrastructural intersectionalities.
13. AI isn't inevitable, but there's no going back because the past was already built on injustice; what we need to work towards are livable futures worth fighting for."

https://danmcquillan.org/resisting_genai_highered_cjuu.html

#AI #GenerativeAI #BigTech #Decomputing

…Anyway, my recommendation is that those of us not already living at the margins *voluntarily* downsize. And out of that comes the strong probability of less resentment.

Here’s the very wonderful @danmcquillan talking to @parismarx about #decomputing, a kind of #degrowth

https://overcast.fm/+ZpQCTh3cE

…aaaaand there’s a new hashtag for me to follow:

#decomputing

And, a very good podcast episode with @parismarx in which Dan spends the first 10 minutes providing a searing critique of UK Labour https://overcast.fm/+ZpQCTh3cE

Very interesting, @parismarx and @danmcquillan

Tagging for #SolarPunkSunday #SolarPunk #DeComputing

excellent interview about #decomputing and human agency in the age of AI

https://www.techwontsave.us/episode/286_decomputing_for_a_better_future_w_dan_mcquillan

@don @mimrma Dito. Ich fand eine der aktuellen Folgen vom „Tech won’t save us“ Podcast dazu mal wieder sehr gut: #Decomputing for a better future.

"#Decomputing For a Better Future" .. P. Marx is joined by D. McQuillan to discuss the global push by govt. to rapidly adopt #AI at all costs ..

👉🏻 https://techwontsave.us/episode/286_decomputing_for_a_better_future_w_dan_mcquillan

Is it possible to imagine a better future where we use less computation? The effects of AI hype almost demand it.

On #TechWontSaveUs, I spoke with @danmcquillan so he could lay out the concept of decomputing as a different way of assessing technology.

Listen to the full episode: https://techwontsave.us/episode/286_decomputing_for_a_better_future_w_dan_mcquillan

#tech #decomputing #ai #generativeai #aihype #siliconvalley

Decomputing as Resistance

https://danmcquillan.org/decomputing_as_resistance.html

Great Text by @danmcquillan about #decomputing #ai and #degrowth

Upcoming seminar by @danmcquillan:

"Drawing on Illich's 'Tools for Conviviality', this talk will argue that an important role for the contemporary university is to resist AI. The university as a space for the pursuit of knowledge and the development of independent thought has long been undermined by neoliberal restructuring and the ambitions of the Ed Tech industry. So-called generative AI has added computational shock and awe to the assault on criticality, both inside and outside higher education, despite the gulf between the rhetoric and the actual capacities of its computational operations. Such is the synergy between AI's dissimulations and emerging political currents that AI will become embedded in all aspects of students' lives at university and afterwards, preempting and foreclosing diverse futures. It's vital to develop alternatives to AI's optimised nihilism and to sustain the joyful knowledge that nothing is inevitable and other worlds are still possible. The talk will ask what Illich has to teach us about an approach to technology that prioritises creativity and autonomy, how we can bolster academic inquiry through technical inquiry, workers' inquiry and struggle inquiry, and whether the future of higher education should enrol lecturers and students in a process of collective decomputing."

https://danmcquillan.org/cpct_abstract.html

#IvanIllich #Conviviality #Decomputing #Degrowth #Education #Creativity #Learning #University #AI #LLM

@osfa_2030 @tunubesecamirio @motorhueso @ana_valdi @manje #decomputing no es un problema solo tecnológico, sino sociotécnico. Así que vale la pena refrescar una de las referencias como Geels and co. :)

Es decir, no es un problema de reducir (¿a quién se le va a pedir reducir y cómo se puede conseguir eso? También interesante tener en cuenta teoría de juegos e incentivos económico-culturales y psicológicos). Es contraintuitivo: para que se consiga la reducción como meta antes hay que modificar..

Big tech is Ransomware. They've stolen all our data and hold all our vital services in the Cloud and at their mercy. We keep paying, or they pull the plug on society. Now is the time for #decomputing

@simon_brooke

"#Decomputing claims that the act of opposing AI's intensification of social and environmental harms is at the same time the assertion that other worlds are possible. It parallels contemporary calls for #degrowth, which also opposes runaway #extractivism by focusing on the alternative structures that could replace it."

#AI #Infrastructures and #Decomputing

https://danmcquillan.org/ai_infrastructures_decomputing_abstract.html

→ Public policymaking: from AI to #decomputing
https://www.jrf.org.uk/ai-for-public-good/public-policymaking-from-ai-to-decomputing

“[…] #AI in #policymaking would make it more precarious and increase outsourcing and privatisation under the cover of over-hyped technology. [It's] a form of ‘shock doctrine’, where the sense of urgency generated by an allegedly world-transforming technology is used as an opportunity for corporate capture and to transform social systems in frankly authoritarian directions without reflection or democratic debate”

@danmcquillan Hi Dan - do you have any updates to this draft? #decomputing #permacomputing