1. Convivial technological futures (computation as his lens)

Scope, set by James 2026-10-11: the thread is convivial technological futures in general, not only computation. His expertise and interest lean computational, and convivial computation remains his particular case and project, but he wants the broader thinking: which technologies, of any kind, can take frugal, repairable, community-owned forms, what that has looked like historically, and what makes such tools last. Research should range across energy, materials, tools, agriculture, transport and so on, and bring back what bears on the computational case without being limited to it.

Illich's distinction: tools that extend what a person can do vs tools that manufacture dependence on the institution that supplies them; past a certain scale institutions serve themselves. James applies it to computing: most of what people do runs on infrastructure owned by a few firms, paid in money, data, attention and control. Once justified by cost; he thinks no longer.

Claims (to be tested, not assumed):

• Restated 2026-10-26 (James): local or community hosting is not totalizing and can realistically be cheaper for each user or community than totalizing mega-cloud; the point is not aggregate efficiency. See hosting-cost-claim. ~~Was:~~ Mass-scale cloud's cost edge has largely gone; "mature" infrastructure is mostly machinery for scale an individual, co-op or town doesn't need. See hosting-cost-claim . Restated 2026-10-26: the claim is about existing and surplus hardware, not new hardware (James, 2026-10-11); new-hardware price evidence does not test it.
• Restated 2026-10-26: local or town-scale AI inference, likewise not totalizing and cheaper per user or community. ~~Was:~~ Local or town-scale AI inference is only a little less efficient than hyperscale, and much cheaper and simpler. See municipal-inference, inference-testbed.
• Therefore computation can take frugal, community-owned forms.
• Added 2026-10-26 (James): the scale argument is a convenient justification for concentrated ownership and rent, in hosting and in most "scaled" provision. See scale-as-justification-for-rent.

Theory of change: bottom-up in three phases (hobbyists; public asks why they pay for services used against them, while Immich/Nextcloud-class alternatives exist; alternatives become normal). Success = a change in the cultural story about convenience, not more self-hosters. See theory-of-change.

Open: do the cost claims survive real numbers; what, concretely, to build. Direction without form; deadline late July 2027 (timeline-2027).

Live: one of his open threads. Re-check with James before relying on it.

Provenance: james-open-threads.md, uploaded by James 2026-10-11, assembled from his own descriptions, autumn 2026 (unverified). Disposition: live.

Historical precedent: farmer-mutual-telephones (a farmer-built network adopted at mass scale, then abandoned for lack of credit and renewal; added 2026-10-11).

Related: convivial-computation, philosophy-of-technology, hosting-cost-claim, municipal-inference, theory-of-change, thread-transition

• Historical precedent found 2026-10-23: community-memory (Berkeley 1973, community computing on a surplus mainframe).
• Replicated surplus labs found 2026-10-26: metareciclagem (Brazil 2002-2012, spores and gambiarra) and access-space-sheffield (Sheffield 2000-).