Daniel Devatman Hromada
daniel@udk-berlin.de

presented at

Symposium "The digital elephant in the room"

Degrowth ??? NOW !!!

Exploited, Earth is dying in front of our eyes and we - artists, researchers, professors - are only rarely part of the solution. Most of the time, we are part of the problem.

Mislead by ambiguity of terms like "Nachhaltigkeit"; corrupted by lobbyist promises on one hand and our own fears of uncertain future on the other, we are unable to do the only thing that counts: change our habits...

Who am I ?

Narren hasten, Kluge warten, Weise gehen in den Garten...

kyberia.sk

Founded in year, 2001 kyberia.sk is the oldest slovak digital community. Awarded Prix Ars Electronica Honorary Mention in 2013 for its unique political system known as "Parallel Democracy Model", Kyberia has its own content-based economy, institutions (senate) , rules of operation (e.g. ostracization) and is still actively used by cca 500 hundred people on daily basis.

Question to plenum: estimated costs after 23 years of operation ?

Kastalia KMS

Kastalia Knowledge Management System, or simply “Kastalia KMS”, is a system for collaborative web-publishing, Open Educational Resource (OER) creation, data-management and archivation of structured information in a form of a so-called “knowledge graph”.

Brought into existence as a system for collaborative "Einführungveranstaltung" presentations of a study program Kunst & Medien and Visual Communication, Kastalia is the backend for fibel.digital , baumhaus.digital, udk.ai, gardens.digital etc. systems as well as my primary teaching tool.

In sum, what was originally a small "pet project" turned out into the most important work (&structured copy) of my life.

teacher.solar

klimatische Wertekodex UdKs

Nach der Jahrtausende lang gelebten Idee des "Mehr" wird es höchste Zeit, die Kultur des "Genugs" zu etablieren.

solarpunk artefacts

Personal Primers (4 student prototypes, 2 teacher prototypes); Magic Wand 0, Magic Wand 1; solar boombox; solar harp

circadian, online-offline, modular / repairable, code-casting, F/LOSS (Linux, Git), outdoor-friendly

less is more

post-apo...

Magic Wand 0

Magic Wand 0 (MW0) is the main teacher artefact issued from the teacher.solar project. In its essence, MW0 is a headless - e.g. no screen and no keyboard - RaspberryPi computer attached and a solar Powerbank which serves as a main server to which students connect during diverse outdoor education (OE) sessions.

RaspberryPi has additional components - notably the GSM module and 4-microphone circular LED Respeaker HAT - attached to it. Software-wise, it runs a Raspbian Linux with additional systemd services (teacher.js, matrix-synapse, Janus, Kastalia KMS, nginx, bluesalsa u.s.w.) in order to provide completely autark OE experience.

The whole system is attached to an awkward piece of wood of unknown origin making the whole setup both piece of art and teacher instrument in the same time. Additional Arduino microcontroller with 12 different sensor types is also attached to the Wand.

MW0 is more closely described in \cite{hromadathree}.

Axiom

Infinite material growth on a finite planet is neither logically possible nor sustainable.

Lemma

Therefore, collapse of the societies based on notion of infinite material growth is inevitable.

Conclusion

The "eternal growth" party is over.

From now on, it's about protecting "the Core" and archiving the rest.

Observations & Aphorisms

Some symptoms describing the current crisis.

Sustainability ... of what ?

For those in power (e.g. Gremien, Gutachter), the term "Nachhaltigkeit" means, first and foremost: "Erhalt des Status quo".

Colleagues

One is networked with everyone except one's very neighbour.

Inputs & Outputs

Anschaffungen ? Wild and many. Elektroschrot ? Plenty. Power consumption ? Keine Ahnung. Reparation ? None. Common material / inventory pool between faculties or just institutes ? Non-existent. Kompost ? Forget it.

Public Private Partnerships

Neither profit nor accumulation but Education is the Goal of University.

Few proposals

Few proposals how to get UdK through the current crisis.

People

Pay people, not corporations (Digitalpakt v2.3).

Foster Yous institutional "Nachwuchs", it's the best investment Your institution will ever have.

(Neuro)diversity, Equity, Inclusion

Software

Avoid Software-as-service (SaS) or cloud-based SW solutions

Choose F/LOSS alternatives, consider Foundations (Blender Foundation, Mozilla, Wiki etc.) as partners for projects

Respect & cherisch existing "pet projects" and invite people to bring new ones into existence

Resources

Audit how much You already have (open & transparent inventories) and how much You consume (energy)

Recycle & Upycle: Transform outputs & byproducts (excess heat, polymers, wood) into inputs

Define local budgets (energy, GPU compute, carbon)

Share...

Lehre & Aufklärung

As role models, teachers are multiplicators (multiply the impact of a teacher not only with amount of students - and students of their students but also with the ΔT)

Bring students outdoors !

Not cynicism but honesty and idealist action should be reaction to the hypocrisy of the global north