A bioregion is an “ecologically and geographically defined area”, contrasted with ways of dividing land such as states and legal jurisdictions, which are human-created, and not necessarily in connection with living ecosystems.
The trend of globalized computing seems to go further in this direction of disconnection from nature and context — the status-quo internet, often symbolized by “the cloud”, is imagined to be both everywhere and nowhere, and sometimes seems like it does not exist in a place, even though in the end every computer exists in the material realm somewhere.
In short Bioregional Computing is a call to bring awareness to where computation happens and where it comes from, to the people who build the software and the datacenters, and to the hardware that the software runs on.
All of which is frequently invisible, or ignored, often by design.
Bringing awareness to the infrastructure and resources we use can also help us be more mindful about the energy and materials they require. A sort of intentional reversal of “out of sight, out of mind”.
According to varia, infrafem (a portmenteua of infrastructure and feminism), considers the means of communication as a means of production and questions who makes them and under which conditions.
What would a network of communication look like that was maintained by the communities that use it, embedded into its bioregion(s), with awareness of its relationship to its local ecosystem, and to the people that steward it?
What do tools for communication look like that are offered with love, with no intention to be “sticky” or to manipulate?
What does software look like that is local-first and offline-first, using only the resources and network connections that are needed?
Bioregional Computing Projects
PeachCloud — software for easily hosting a scuttlebutt pub on a raspberry pi.
YunoHost — software aiming for the simplest administration of a server and to democratize self-hosting.
Coop-Cloud — public interest infrastructure. an alternative to corporate clouds built by tech co-ops.
Servers.Coop — an alternative to corporate cloud providers such as aws and digital ocean