Sustainable Computers

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Vision for Sustainable Computers

Our world is facing a series of very extreme environmental challenges that young people will need to address in coming years and decades.

Technology can help us meet these challenges because technology can democratise information and help people make better informed decisions about actions to be taken.

The Raspberry Pi and other Linux devices are excellent tools because they supports a range of information sharing technologies and are very resource efficient. The main reason they are efficient is because the software they run on is not bloated and some software versions are deliberately designed to run efficiently on older computer models.

If you can learn how to use Linux, then you can more directly help local communities. Example applications that would support a sustainable computing platform include:

  • Hosting your own MediaWiki site or web site to serve as a knowledge base for you and the community (such as this one)
  • Hosting a site to support the exchange and borrowing of local goods (e.g. book, infant toy or tool library)
  • Hosting a file server and curating resources relevant to a particular subject area or hobby (Creative Commons resources, pdf files, instructional videos, etc)
  • Supporting the online presence for a community group or club (e.g. Friends of Plenty River)
  • Supporting schools develop and maintain their own ICT Infrastructure (Local Network and Intranet) and hosting Creative Commons educational material.
  • Supporting schools develop IoT sensors for various environmental educational and sustainability projects in schools

Your mission should therefore be to understand as much as you can about Linux and the Raspberry Pi so that you can support the hosting of information to help your local community, especially information and ideas that relate to sustainability practises.

How to make a computer more sustainable

Here are some simple suggestions on how you can make any computer more sustainable. Ideally, a computer should last for 10-20 years and perform important, but limited functions. In computer terms we need to create the transport equivalent of a bike, walking paths and efficient public transport system - rather than a transport system dominated by cars (electric, petrol, gas and diesel), roads and highways.

  • If you have a PC install Linux (e.g. Debian or Ubuntu Linux flavours). You can also install the Raspberry Pi Desktop.
  • If you have a Mac you can keep the existing operating system but don't upgrade it constantly to the next new version. The Mac operating system is actual built on a Linux platform, so it is already very efficient.
  • Install an app so that you can monitor the processor temperature. Ideally the temperature should be 40degC or lower. High processor temperatures will shorten the life of the computer.
  • Always recharge your laptop fully when the battery is drained to 20-25% of capacity. Do not go below 20% capacity because this will shorten the life of the battery. Do not leave the laptop permanently on charge because this will also shorten the life of the battery.
  • Use applications that limit excessive reading and writing to the hard drive (physical or solid state drives). Using a pdf document on a computer only needs minimal access to the hard drive. Similar for word processing or watching a video.
  • Keeping hard drives less than 70% full of capacity so that the file management system can optimise access to files (e.g. less fragmentation of large files).
  • Archiving files on external media such as hard drives or USB memory sticks to reduce disk space requirements on the main computer hard drive.
  • Unfortunately, any computer software that results in high processor temperatures or excessive writes to the hard drive or solid state drive (SSD) will shorten the life of the computer.
  • Applications to run on the computer include:
    • Word processing and other office suite applications - e.g. OpenOffice or LibreOffice
    • PDF Viewer - for reading books and other documents
    • Web browser - viewing Wikipedia and other MediaWiki based web sites and not processor intensive. Also no advertising or tracking software. Most other web sites are processor intensive because they include videos, advertisements, and harvest data while you are connected to the page.
    • Email - based text based communication tool with some provision for file attachments.
    • Media players - for audio, music and videos (e.g. VLC or QuickTime).
    • Entertainment software (such as computer games) that are not processor intensive.
    • Programming software - examples are Geany and Arduino development environments (e.g. Pygames - Python games).
    • Miscellaneous - photo editing, scanning, Voice over IP (VoIP).
  • Video conferencing software is processor intensive. However new versions could be developed that are less processor intensive.

Role of Technology in Sustainability

The important role for technology is to help us achieve the goal of sustainable living. While it can be argued that we do not need technology to live sustainably, some small additions of appropriate technology will significantly improve living standards by making information more accessible.

All technology has an effect on people and the environment. Every technology will generate waste and will have a limited life. The aim should to use technology for essential services to extend the useful life of the technology. Look at the Youtube videos The Story of Stuff and The Story of Electronics for a better understanding of the life cycle of the things we buys and electronic waste.

We will be focusing on projects that will help the environment and that also give us a good working knowledge of computers:

  • Learning to design, build, code and repair smart things and software
  • Learning to share our knowledge using ICT computing platforms
  • Learning how to apply these skills more holistically to save our planet

Role of Local Government

Local government should play a significant role in supporting a sustainable technology ecosystem.

  • Provide free email with limited storage (e.g. 5GB) to local residents
  • Host Wikipedia sites (using the mediawiki engine) or simple web sites with content relevant to the community (e.g. Urban farming wiki)
  • Host file servers with educational and Creative Commons content and resources for schools (e.g. Khan Academy)
  • Host community social pages for special interest groups related to sustainability

All these services would be paid for by the community (similar to a library service). These services would be free of advertisements and residents would not be selling their data.

Debian installation on Mac

Retro Computers

Retro computers are a very important learning tool within schools. They have the following advantages:

  1. The first computers were relatively small and simple machines. The memory and programs were small, so its relatively easy for a beginner to understand how a computer works and to hack the computer innards. Modern computers have millions of lines of computer code, contributed by thousands of computer programmers. But essentially they are upscaled versions of these original computers.
  2. Lots of books and software have been carefully collected by interest groups and are available for free on the internet.
  3. The systems will never change. Once you learn how to use them you can use this same knowledge year after year (good for teachers). No more upgrades, exept for the emulators that simulate the running of these old computers.
  4. They can teach us fundamental concepts about computers and how they work. The documentation at the time of these computers was very instructive and educational. Many of the best programmers in the 80's and 90's first leaned to program on these relatively simple machines. These early machines perhaps still best teach the equivalent of 1 + 1 = 2 in computer speak.
  5. You can emulate these computers on modern computers using special software. The emulators are not processor intensive. The retro computers themselves are not resource intensive. Once you have the retro computers running you don't need any other resources other than pdf books and software relevant to that retro computer.
  6. They hosted very interesting computer languages which are great for beginners - BASIC, Assembly, Machine Code, Pascal, C, etc
  7. These computers operated off-line. So once you are set up you can explore these systems without the internet.
  8. Hardware and processor demands are minimal. So they represent some of the first sustainable computers. You can still buy these old machines in good working condition 30-40 years after they were built.
  9. You can even play retro games.
  • Good retro computer models to explore include:
    • Apple II
    • Commodore 64
    • Atari 800
    • TRS-80
    • MicroBee
    • BBC

The best environment to learn about retro computers is in Primary and Secondary School. Check out Usborne 1980s Computer Books as a start to see how fun coding was back in the 80s.

Apple II

Here is a list of resources to get you started with your own Apple II emulator. I encourage you to become familiar with one Retro Computer (8 bit computer) and curate all the resources you need to make it fun and educational so this can be preserved for future generations.

  • Emulator - the program that runs on a modern computer that simulates an older computer, such as the Apple II. You can download the following Apple II emulators from these sites:
    • Virtual II
    • Apple Asimov site - resources for the Virtual II emulator and other emulators
    • LinApple - an Apple II emulator for Linux machines
    • RetroPie - you can install RetroPie on the Raspberry Pi and other Linux machines. This emulator can emulate a range of old computing platforms.
  • Operating System ROMs - the ROM is the Operating System for the Apple II emulator. Without it the emulator will not work. You can download the ROM from this site:
  • Software and Books - With the Apple II ROMs installed you will only have basic functionality. You will need to download some additional software applications from these sites. There are also books and manuals to help you use the software.
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