Two things that have caught my eyes this year, besides the whole AI craze, (which btw... I am pretty tired of it). Has been, the indie web, and cyberdecks. The first one, I am still to do a deep dive, however the second one, I have been reviewing constantly. I was at first impressed that it was women that were taking the lead, although, to be honest, I have seen more males posting videos about the different cyberdecks.
If we are being honest, I have know about this for a while, I just knew it by other names. Modders is the one that come to mind, although aesthetically is different at the core is the same. Modding come from having custom hardware or tweaking hardware to increase performance, so the range is quite big. It will go from overclocking your processor, introduce different cooling systems or having custom design on the CPU of the PC.
However cyberdecks have been more specific into micro computers, mostly inspired by SBC (Single Board Computers). I used to be a fan of all this back in the 2000s, with Linux embedded systems. I remember hardware that, although I never got to own. I did window shop on the net. Projects such as the mini-itx.com site, looking a custom work and having Linux running on anything from a Altoids mint can to a Millennium Falcon project.
The difference now is the miniaturization of displays, the projects can go even one step further into not just the CPU but the keyboard and the displays. Having the whole computer embedded into custom things. Here is where the cyberdeck movement we are learning to exist is exploding as we got to miniaturize the whole computer into handbags, min arcades, 3d printed shapes and forms.
But the bigger question is, why do we need all these if we already have phones? We are already miniaturized!
Here is where the indie part comes, and how many people are looking into this cyberpunk movement. The term, cyberpunk is divided by cybernetics and rebellion. Owning your own hardware has been always a very freedom inspiring thing. This is the spirit of the Linux and Free Software community and later Free hardware community comes with. Owning your own piece of cybernetics without the control of a large corporation.
The hacking spirit of soldering your own wires and boards, inserting micro-batteries into tight places and having an almost invisible computer that can connect, monitor and stream encrypted data real time is something that still appeal to many computer people but also people that understand the value of data and privacy. In a world where AI has started to sprint and merge with other things like the Internet of things. Having and owning your stack (hardware, software and data) is becoming a valuable resource.
I have started some steps towards joining that community . I have always been tinkering with things like Raspberry Pi, even was an avid reader of MagPi, a _Raspberry Pi_ inspired projects magazine. I also remember being a fan of the mini-itx site, and learning again about cyberdecks make me want to jump back in. Also the indie web is making me go into that direction which I would hopefully write about soon enough.
Have you ever seen this? Are you a former member of these communities? Please share on the comments.
