Post Collapse Computing Part 2: What if we Fail?
This is a lightly edited version of my GUADEC 2022 talk, given at c-base in Berlin on July 21, 2022. Part 1 briefly summarizes the horrors we’re likely to face as a result of the climate crisis, and why civil resistance is our best bet to still avoid some of the worst-case scenarios. Trigger Warning: Very depressing facts about climate and societal collapse.
While I think it’s critical to use the next few years to try and avert the worst effects of this crisis, I believe we also need to think ahead and consider potential failure scenarios.
What would it mean if we fail to force our governments to enact the necessary drastic climate action, both for society at large but also very concretely for us as free software developers? In other words: What does collapse mean for GNOME?
In researching the subject I discovered that there’s actually a discipline studying questions like this, called “Collapsology”.