Future Garbage
It was The Great Raspberry Pi Shortage of 2021, and also a global pandemic that claimed the lives of millions of people. Busying myself with trivial things, I made a retro video game system out of a Raspberry Pi 4. It was so much fun that I wanted to buy another one, but any available Raspberry Pi was being flipped for many times the retail price.
I thought, No problem, I have all these smartphones gathering dust in a drawer. After all, a Raspberry Pi is just an ARM processor and every smartphone has an ARM processor. Some of those old phones might even be more powerful than a Pi 4.
I assumed that I could install a conventional version of Linux onto Android hardware. Even if it was the most bare bones version of Linux, without a graphical user interface, that would give me enough to work with.
My research turned up almost nothing. I was genuinely embarrassed. I should’ve known better. I did know better! Yet I stupidly thought that the Android open source project combined with somebody, or “the community”, had a solution for reusing all this hardware. It was unthinkable that the last twenty years of smartphones were destined to be paperweights.
For years, I heard all this talk about Android’s openness, with software built on open source, and Google wanting to appear to be the good guy opposite Apple. Now it’s been seventeen years since the first Android phone and we have nothing to show for it. There is no consensus alternative software for Android phones and no straight-forward way to install it.
(More on this later. I’ve spent a lot of time researching alternative smartphone operating systems.)
After that, the spell was broken. I realized that my technology products would all become garbage in the future, and much sooner than I expected. I started to see all my technology as future garbage.
Enough Future Garbage
I’m taking a stand against the future garbage cycle. In the short-term, this means no more money for new devices. With the long-term goal of reinventing my tech ecosystem using things I already own and second-hand tech. The most important part is to not buy anything brand new.
I’ll make compromises – it’s okay if I have less computing power or fewer features.
I’ll dabble in hypocrisy – I still live in modern society and have to negotiate it.
I have questions that I need answered. How much can I cut down on e-waste by making different consumer and lifestyle choices? How much will I have to give up by relying on aging and second-hand products? Will I need to buy something new to keep using essential services? Can I replace mainstream commercial services with more durable alternatives?
I won’t have the answers to these questions for years. And this is the exciting part. This is where I learn, in a visceral way, how much I need mainstream technology, and how much of it is truly garbage.
Previously: