Call for salvaged hardware!

[Matt Price]

On Tue, 2009-12-08 at 16:42 -0500, Christopher Browne wrote: 
> On Tue, Dec 8, 2009 at 1:18 PM, Maureen E.Thornton <maureen-lxSQFCZeNF4 at public.gmane.org> wrote:

> I don't want to be over-negative about this, but it's not all that
> easy to dispose of elderly computers effectively/economically.
> 
> There are several problems that make it difficult for such enterprises
> to be particularly economical:
> 
> - Enterprises needing to do disposal need to dispose of quite a lot of
> hardware.  200 computers, 150 monitors, and such.
> 
> - For this to be a viable enterprise (and I am not assuming a
> particular form of business organization; I don't think not-for-profit
> versus for-profit changes the questions/answers essentially), it isn't
> just a one time shot - they need to cope with this stuff coming in
> 100x per year.
> 
> - Transport and storage are both costly.  You need all of:
>  a) Real estate to accommodate the hardware in compact piles,
>  b) Real estate to represent a "work area",
>  c) Truck(s) to do delivery
>  d) Staff, available on demand, to bring piles of hardware in, and
> move it between a), b), and c)
>  e) Staff to [do something] with the hardware once it's there
>  f) Presumably, some portion of the materials will need to get put
> into another truck to go out somewhere else
> 
> When I lived in Texas, there was a place that did this; it had
> low-cost, terribly-far-from-downtown, warehouse space, and they added
> in g)

I think these are actually important concerns that should be taken very
seriously.  But for me at least there are other goals, see below...

> There's something of a mistake here, too, of assuming that the
> materials are "interesting as computers," which is roughly the same
> mistake people commonly make when thinking about places like Future

> A similarly cynical view applies fairly well to bookstores...  Most
> bookstores are businesses that receive boxes full of objects that fit
> nicely on shelves, and try to sell these objects as effectively as
> they can.  Being a "book lover" isn't necessarily a useful attribute
> for the staff at a Chapters outlet.
> 
> Back to the "old computer store"...  I can't see this reclamation
> enterprise being of terribly much interest to "computer lovers" - the
> economics of it discourage that.
> 
> A "computer reprocessing" place has a *huge* risk of falling into the
> same problem.  And it quickly ceases to be "good Samaritans,"
> transforming instead into "that crazy old lady who has 470 cats in her
> apartment."  :-(

For me the interesting part of any such project is not recycling e-waste
-- i mean, that's great to do and we should do it -- but the best way
not generate waste is to stop using all these ridiculous gadgets we use.
What i'm after is the transformative effects of free software -- the way
that it turns you intos someone who undersntads and controls the tools
you use on a daily basis, and how, fundamentally, it still holds out
some promise of organizing the world in a Better Way.  So I think of my
efforts as "emancipatory technology" -- technology-based initiatives
that really aim at either personal or social transformation, though
perhaps in a smallish way.  So the pedagogical aims are certainly at
least as prominent for me as either the environmental or
enterprise-focused ones.  

just my 0.02 CAD.  

I do agree w/ maureen & colin that we ought to ocntinue this discussion
as a kind of meta-collective -- all the initiatives should be figuroing
out how to support each other.  

matt
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