manifesto

2026-06-04T00:00:00+00:00

The world that most humans exist in is one build on convenience. At every waking (and resting) moment, we are presented with technology to make our lives easier. At the grocery store, we buy frozen mango chunks for our smoothies. At home we use a microwave to heat our leftovers. On our phones, we use services from google or apple to manage our digital lives and resources.

All of these conviniences replace energy that we would have had to expend in the form of physical labor. We don't have to grow mango on our own land, harvast it, process it, and blend it by hand. We don't have to build a fire to heat up our leftovers. We don't have to build a computer and operating system from scratch to access cyberspace.

Though we don't see the energy that we have avoided expending ourselves, it is still very much present in our lives. After all, energy cannot be created or destroyed. Instead, the convieniences in our lives come with embedded energy. The hands that harvasted the mangos expended energy. The machines that assembled extracted metals from the earth to form your microwave used energy. The massive data centers that power your email, maps, instagram, etc etc etc expended immense energy.

What is so peculiar about our experience of the world today, is that most of the energy and labour we interact with is unperceivable. It is a world that at times can feel like magic. It's a world of ghosts</a>.

On top of that, more and more of the objects we interact with in our daily lives are becoming les and less physical. A car from the 2000's and before is mostly a physical machine. To use it, you need it to have (mostly) working parts and fluids. A car today is different. To use it, you need both the physical machine and virtual parts, like firmware, subscription fees, a digital account and owner profile. The same concept applies in increasing intensity to our phones, TV's, and even washing machines.

The problem with this, is that this transformation has not been designed to benefit us, ordinary people who rely on these conviniences to survive modern life. This shift instead is an escalation of the corporate extraction, theft, and indifference.

The result? Massive increases in energy usage, complexity, and a loss of ability for us to understand, fix, and control the objects we use everyday.

...to be continued

solarmail

manifesto