Cyberdeck Week: What I Love About Them

The trend of cyberdecks may feel a bit eye-rolly for anyone judging the power of the computer1. Maybe that's not what it's about. Maybe the cyberdeck is a modern folk craft. It stems from a mix of older practices2 and modern folklore3. Like a lot of folk crafting, there's no need to make your own. Yet we do.

There's something very human about making a handle for an ax, just the same as there's something very human about soldering an single board computer to a power supply. It is the craft of doing and building a tradition that is universally human.

Knowing how to do something expands our abilities even just a little bit when confronted with problems in our day to day.

Cyberdeck building is also hopeful. We've been seeing climate change has hit it's tipping point. Yet, we keep building. Building is human nature. I want to build despite the doom of it. Maybe even more because of it!

Cyberdecks allow us to scratch that itch while exploring the possibility of renewable tech. Maybe it won't save our planet but it gives me comfort that should the world sputter to a hot death, we may be able to build things from the pieces of our past.

There is limitation in building from old tech. Though any creative person knows that limitations often spark further creativity. Place us in a box and we will paint a mural and grow a garden. What can we build within the limited world of a cyberdeck?

Perhaps that small personal cyberdeck may be the reflection we need to see something in ourselves. An object that is very much our personal device in and out. What does it say about me? What feedback loop can I build to become a better user of the cyberdeck and the cyberdeck a better tool for me?

These are meditations that can't come from my Macbook Air.

If I think of the cyberdeck as just a piece of technology, I get lost in the gigs, ram, and power. However, if I think of it as a craft. A doing. A continual thing that I do to make it better then it becomes a practice. And practices can lead to interesting things.

The point is not the cyberdeck itself. It is the building, crafting, interacting, and maintenance that the cyberdeck provides.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/TVBop5SCQdw?rel=0

Cyberdeck Week: What I Hate About Them, https://fruitybirds.com/3mr3ngi2ot22o

Homebrew computer clubs, Steve Wozniak, computer kits, etc.

Cyberpunk and scifi stories. Specifically 1984 novel Neuromancer by William Gibson.