Interview with Bill Tomlinson
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Video transcript: "Over the last number of years, several of my colleagues and I have been working on a couple of different topics that interrelate. One is Collapse Informatics and another is Computing Within Limits. Both of them focus on the idea that industrial civilization as we currently know it, is potentially creating the conditions for its own failure, or making the viability of its own ecosystems and its own ways of existing, calling them into question. Both Collapse Informatics and Computing Within Limits are exploring aspects of that problem of, sort of, ways that we can use novel forms of computing in ways that these set of ideas affect the computing industry and the research community. To be able to bring about new kinds of computing systems that might allow us as a civilization to more effectively engage with these sets of issues. For example, Collapse Informatics was focusing on building systems in the abundant present for use in the future of scarcity.
And Computing Within Limits has been looking at the notion that industrial civilization is typically very much growth focused, and the computing industry, situated within industrial civilization also tends to be growth focused. However, there might be new kinds of computing that could arise that could support a de-growth, or an anti-growth type of direction for civilization. With the broad sense being that that will either be something that we go into voluntarily by transforming civilization into something that is not so growth focused, or something that will be thrust on us involuntarily, as civilization potentially begins to collapse around us over the next couple of decades."
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