Why you should get a worse computer

ABSTRACT: We're used to thinking of technology as always progressing, and in terms of hardware that's definitely true: CPUs are getting more powerful, memory cheaper, networks faster, and so on, forever. But why does it feel like actually using computers is getting slower and shittier? Abundant computing resources and a culture of optimizing for developer productivity above all else have led to a situation where most hardware improvements are instantly negated by software inefficiency. This is a problem known from other domains (such as traffic flow), where increasing capacity is paradoxically not reducing but rather increasing the load on the system, resulting in a worse overall outcome. This talk discusses how we could approach this problem as a field, and makes some provocative recommendations — such as getting a worse computer. BIO: Tobias Bernard is an Italian interaction designer based in Berlin. He's a member of the GNOME design team and works for Purism on the Librem 5 team. When he’s not doing GNOME stuff, he's working to avoid climate disaster through mass civil resistance.Read less