Computing Rules for the Near Future - a manifesto
10.08.2025
Let's face it. The tech is becoming worse. Our solarpunk future is dying, cyberpunk dystopia is here and it's probably gonna stay for some time. With data leaks happening almost every other day and the privacy and anonymity of the internet slowly disappearing, I thought we should engineer our own future. One that is human oriented again. So here is my manifesto. My list of computing rules for the next decade. All the things I do are gonna be affected by the rules laid out here. Please note that I might add some rule every now and then. This has been on my mind for way too long, and my brain fog I've been dealing with lately is not making things any easier. Never mind the preface, here we go.
1. Knowledge should not be locked behind memberships or paywalls
We all saw it, it happened already. With the massive
Reddit API protests the internet became almost unusable. Reddit keeps too much of human knowledge, relying
on a single knowledge base is bad for everyone. And don't get me started on every single project having a dedicated
Discord server. Bad architecture of Discord client aside, the fact that so much knowledge and documentation is
stored somewhere without access to wider audience, with next to no indexing, wasting the time of the more knowledgeable
users on responding the same questions over and over, is horrible. I still can't believe that's where we're at
right now.
I call for return of the forums. Small, searchable communities. Not relying on a single service provider, eliminating
the blackout point of failure, available in read mode for every internet user. We left the utopia to live in the
sewers.
2. A computer should not make noises, unless asked
Absolutely no one is looking for autoplaying thing in the background. While this has gotten much better in the last few years, this should have never been a problem. Autoplaying is bad by itself for users with limited connection, autoplay with sound is straight up offensive. I'm not talking only about websites. Parts of public infrastructure just talks. I do not need the whole grocery store to know I'm buying bread at the self checkout. I am making exceptions for accessibility reasons, like when the god forsaken Cortana in Windows 10 talked through the installation. Still annoying, but there's a reason behind that. We should look into some alternatives though.
3. A computer should not be a blackbox, it should be widely understood how computers work
It pains me to say this, but I'm a part of a generation that is bad with computers again. The iPhone brought easy computing to everyone in 2007. And while I'm glad that it did, it also brought the idea of locking down the software. It makes me so sad when my peers don't know how navigating folders work. The computers are beautiful things, we basically came up with ways to convince sand to think. How cool is that? We need to bring back tech literacy, big time. Especially now that internet privacy is about to die.
4. Software should be swift, with very fast latency to input
Decades of hardware advancements are completely negated by sloppy slow software. My current computer is leagues better than the Pentium 4 I used when I was 5 years old. Yet it does not boot any faster. It does not navigate folder structure any faster. The programs still take several seconds to lunch. Why? Why can nothing be snappy? We have the technology, we have the numbers. Yet our software still takes ages to work at all. No matter if it is on a phone, tablet, desktop, or one of those ARM computers. Nothing is as fast as it should be. Oh and if your program needs a splash screen you failed.
5. Unix philosophy is sacred, and should be widely adopted
The idea of small, fast and well working programs working together is much better than big, monolithic programs that take ages to load and just as long to process your data and inputs. When it can be near instant. We all can see it, we all can experience it. There's no reason why computing should take as long as it does.
6. Self hosting should become a standard in small networks and communities
Big tech is untrustworthy. Simple as that. Open source self hosted solutions are the building blocks of the solarpunk future. Unfortunately I can't imagine every household to have a server with custom run software in the next 10 years, but I can imagine self hosted small communities. House of flats, neighborhoods. Things like that. Not every family has a techie, but on a scale of a larger unit, every community can have and probably already have one.
7. We should empathize content curation and limit algorithmic feeds
AI generated content is mostly meaningless. With our feeds getting overwhelmed with completely lifeless images and videos of nothing of substance, and service providers are not doing anything to fight it, we need a way to curate our online experience again. RSS feeds need to make a comeback, people need to know about the miracle of subscribing to anything you want at one place. Community curated content, such as in some online games, always beat the robotic recommendations of slop. We can lean into that like never before.
8. Users should be capable of deep customization if they want to
Everything is the same. Every social media site has the same layout, with the same profile. You get to pick a profile pick and sometimes even another, hero picture. And a small description. Isn't it awesome? And look at our doomscrolling applications, our operating systems, how every word processor is blue and every presentation maker is red. Our computers have the power to display different images, different CSSs, heck, look at indie web. All the tech is the same, and it's the time to differentiate.
9. Hardware should be allowed to work as long as possible
As long as it works, why should you replace it? Because the corporation taking care of your OS decided it's
too old to run their latest slop? Because big tech needs to drive more sales, so they introduce artificial
hurdles just to force you to upgrade? So that we can produce more e-waste?
As long as it works, and does not need a nuclear reactor for power, I think we should be able to run whatever the
heck we want. Our most used applications are web based anyway, each month we're becoming less and less platform
dependent.
10. Software should be as light as possible to save energy
Years ago I read an article about computing after an energy crisis. How heavy software can run down the batteries faster. Imagine you get an hour of usable electricity a day, that gets cut down in half because your OS have built in AI functions that nobody asked for. It's the responsible thing to do to write software as light as possible. Not only to save time, but to save energy if things come to the worst.
11. Set standards should never be proprietary
This one feels self explanatory. Governments being dependent on tech companies such as Adobe for their horrendous PDFs, or Microsoft for their office suite is just bad practice. It's unsafe, sending sensitive data abroad, while also making it unaccessible for some users.
12. Computing should be decentralized
Remember that one time bunch of crypto-pseudo internet 3.0 services became unavailable, due to AWS outage? Or how about the latest data leak? Chances are, by the time you read this, a data leak happened less than week ago. The data leak I have in my mind is ancient history by now. I feel like I'm repeating myself in this article, but decentralization and self hosting protects our data, protects our communities.
That's it for now
I'm going to bed, I'm very tired today. I might come up with better phrasings and ending to this article later. Peace.