The original purpose of this project was to design and then construct computers that would be able to survive a societal collapse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After working on the project, it became apparent that the point of the project should not be to imagine a hypothetical future, but to engage practically with the problems of the present.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The entire computing stack of the modern era is large, confusing, and unsafe. People would rather excuse themselves from having to learn about it. Who can blame them?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The first aim of the project is to be exceedingly cost effective: “if the oppressed cannot access some technology, then it is not revolutionary”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The second aim of the project is the promotion of digital literacy. Digital literacy should promote a joyful user experience that is non-exploitative. It should also foster a sense of community–“no-one is an island”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To this end, the scope of the people’s permacomputer project was deliberately limited to programs around or just over 100 lines. Definitely not more than 200.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The project therefore decided to investigate BASIC as the paradigmatic human-computer interface for the permacomputer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For the application towards which it was targeted, the investigation the project has done so far into BASIC has been fruitful, and even quite surprising–the 70s\/80s hobby computing scene was far richer and more creative than the project previously assumed: not less than five (5) different text editors in BASIC were unearthed!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The original purpose of this project was to design and then construct computers that would be able to survive a societal collapse. After working on the project, it became apparent that the point of the project should not be to imagine a hypothetical future, but to engage practically with the problems of the present. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":56,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[6,7,8],"class_list":["post-53","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-housekeeping","tag-general","tag-housekeeping","tag-introduction"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/permacomputer.solarpunk.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/unix-mainframe.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/permacomputer.solarpunk.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/permacomputer.solarpunk.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/permacomputer.solarpunk.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/permacomputer.solarpunk.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/permacomputer.solarpunk.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=53"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/permacomputer.solarpunk.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55,"href":"https:\/\/permacomputer.solarpunk.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53\/revisions\/55"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/permacomputer.solarpunk.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/56"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/permacomputer.solarpunk.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=53"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/permacomputer.solarpunk.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=53"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/permacomputer.solarpunk.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=53"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}