It feels overly negative to me. People, mostly younger people, are building them, tinkering with them and are excited to post about them. Is it any surprise they’re doing so on TikTok or wherever? Yes, it’s a little ironic considering the anti-big-tech vibes mentioned in the article, but is it any different from when our lot were posting to Google+ etc?
I don’t know, this feels like a good thing to me, and something we should encourage. The more people playing and experimenting with tech rather than passively consuming the better.
If I was a teenager again today I like to think I’d be hacking one of these together.
I think I'd over indexed on the unfinished look of some of them, but relooking at them as prototypes instead of the level of the original set makes them seem more reasonable.
While there are definitely a few notable builds that involved actually-interesting technical problem solving, I think most cyberdecks make more sense through the lens of physical concept art exploring what a rugged or perhaps ultra-personalized personal computer can be.
Which, don't get me wrong, is generally fine, because not everything has to be functional, art is important, bla bla bla. Problem however is when the algorithm gets involved and "being not part of the mainstream" becomes a mainstream metric to optimize for.
This feels like that, and - as it often has happened - it weaponizes the usual stuff to defend itself. Which we do not want, because the stuff it weaponizes is actually important, so it should not be tainted by the big value extraction machine in the cloud.
It basically explains this mechanism in great detail.
Bunnie Huang's Precursor project was a genuine act of rebellion against the locked down nature of modern computing. These cyberdecks are tacky cosplay accessories for adults.
I'm arguing that the author's main point is based on the Instagram posts, and this is invalid.
There is. "We want to escape" is a very different viewpoint from "we want to liberate the masses."
Freeing yourself from the social media is definitely doable. Depending on how firmly engaged you are at the moment, it can vary in difficulty between fait accompli and moderately challenging. It's obviously possible for anyone to do themselves.
Liberating the masses? Morpheus said it best:
"The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But when you're inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it."
I don't think this is a point the author spoke about at all.
To crudely summarize what I think their claim is: Cyberdecks are an anti-big tech creation. They are spreading outside traditional hackers and the proof is these reels.
My claim is that cyberdecks are not spreading, and instead those reels is just evidence that (a) people will mine all subcultures for topics that they can create views from and (b) the author themselves is enabling this behavior.
Post your creation on a social channel not dominated by white bros?
You are fake, a culture miner and engagement farming.
See the post above for a textbook way of rejecting anyone who isn't a white tech bro.
But maybe you are right and it isn't just engagement mining. I think my problem is more that I'm comparing the level of finish on the original cyberdecks to these ones, and they don't compare well.
But perhaps I should be thinking of these as prototype level ones.
(It's also very valid to point out the original ones were so well finished because they were engagement mining too)
Raspberry Pi as a platform has revolutionized access to computers in my opinion, though since the RAM crisis started not so much anymore due to the insane price differences. But the Hackberry is the computing device where I think it has lots of potential for being my actual "Linux on the go" that I wanted but never got ... for the last 15(?) years waiting for it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HK0uAKkt0AE colorforth deck
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kn0MxHlima0 discrete deck built like the tandy 1000
If Cyberdeck builds get people building, then it's all good. Farming does encourage others to build so it's all heading in the right direction :)
Am I a 'real' fan of band X, or not, because I only got into them with there latest hit album?
This isn't a new thing. Niche thing becomes popular. Fans of niche thing try to gate keep.
My biggest critique would be that the author doesn't realise the 'algorithmic plantation' they are in. The only cyberdecks I've seen are made by white men. Not trans and black people.
Further I don't even think it's about cyberdecks per se. That's the in thing. Before that it was neo pixels or whatever. People like to make things, and people are influenced by others. The cyberdecks isn't the counter cultural element. It's the making of whatever that is. Cyberdecks are just the latest thing.
It's also telling that the most popular videos are about building the most visually striking Cyberdecks and not about building what a Cyberdeck is actually useful for—that's what gets engagement on short-form video platforms.
But I think it's a massively positive thing overall:
-Women, LGBTQ folks, and other underrepresented groups are finding their way to these nerdier hobbies.
-People are getting tired of technology taking over their lives, specifically attention economy and surveillance tech.
-People are learning about electronics and understanding that there are other ways of doing things.
I fail to see the negative in this. Even if none of these cyberdecks are used for practical purposes, someone learned something new. And, even if their cyberdeck gathers dust, being conscious of their tech usage might change how they use their MacBook or the internet more generally.
I think what you're saying is a bit like criticizing someone for not being a self-sustaining farmer because they only grew their own vegetables one summer and then quit.
They may not only eat their own vegetables, but that experience may lead to them buying from farmer's markets vs. Big Food. And that's a net positive.
Yes, there are few people who created cyberdecks as a counter-culture, anti-company tool (which is a lot of what the author argues).
But some of the newer ones they highlight are nothing more than engagement farming reels. They are the very definition of the opposite of what the author writes here:
> We want to escape the algorithmic plantations that tech companies have herded us into.
I don't know of they fail to see this because they are blinded by their hope or there is a more complex viewpoint I'm missing.