Comp(h)osting (with) our phones

Sharing and discussing in the morning

Ivan Illich: Tools for Conviviality (1973)

The complexity of objects makes it harder to be familiar with them. The bicycle as a positive example: You can repair it yourself (or with a community, people to people, gossip about what to do with a bike). You can see how it turns and how the mechanisms are working. Biking (and walking) allows you to grasp distances (still a feeling for the landscape and the people on the way). A bike is human sized—things that are too small (microchip) or too big (data centers) are harder to grasp and understand

Compressed images

Dithering has become an aesthetic for low tech websites. It is often used as green washing, sometimes the images are not even really dithered. Also, nostalgia. There are options for compression that are less visible, but equally as effective. Ask questions such as: Do we need images? Do we need an option to comment? Interactivity? Can we use SVGs instead? Important: trigger a conversation about it. How do we not fall into the trap of a default aesthetic? If you do want to make a dithered image, there are many ways: PS, Gimp, python image library, ImageMagick

Social practices

The most sustainable act is using things communally: A bread oven used to be shared by a whole village. A printed book that is shared among friends uses less energy over time than loading and reloading a website. There is no decay, no upkeep. Marie's solar powered coffee pot takes long to make the first coffee, and can then be used more effectively. Multiple websites can point to the same image instead of hosting them individually. There's no need to offer a service to everyone at all times, it can be figured out on demand (e.g. sending full sized images only to people who ask)

Gossip round

• What was your first (smart)phone?
• What is the history of the device you brought in to convert into a server?
• Which OS are your running on your current phone?
• What are your favorite apps and why?

Using smartphones to host websites

In the afternoon session, we started setting up the mobile phone servers. We largely followed this guide: Composting Mobile Phones - Hosting server on obsolete mobile phones. Marie had brought a few phones to use, but for those running Android, it was also possible to use their own devices.

The steps included:

1. Connect all phones and laptops to the same WiFi.

2. Download Termux on the phone.

3. Download Termux API, open it and check the permission on

4. Install termux API (and test with termux-vibrate... brrrt).

5. Install and run NGINX.

6. Edit the html page.

To be able to edit the website from our website, we ssh'ed into our phones with our laptops. Using termux, we could do other fun things with our phones without touching them. For example:

• turning the flashlight on and off
• changing the wallpaper on the phone
• using text to speech (only enabled by default on some devices)
• recording with the phone's microphone
• read SMS

Links gathered throughout the day

Marie!

Low Tech Magazine

Making dithered images with python

Clara Rigaud

Web Design Museum