In the latest instalment of his newsletter, Robin Sloane mentions the notion of “permacomputing”:
There’s an idea simmering out there, still fringe, coaxed forward by a network of artists and hobbyists: it’s called “permacomputing” and it asks the question, what would computers look like if they were really engineered to last, on serious time scales? You already know the answers! They’d use less power; they’d be hardy against the elements; they’d be repairable — that’s crucial — and they’d be comprehensible. The whole stack, from the hardware to the boot loader to the OS (if there is one) to the application, would be something that a person could hold in their head.
Further down his text, he describes how such kind of permacomputing may exist concretely on recycled electronics:
The sailing/computing duo Hundred Rabbits are pilgrim-poets of permacomputing. Their Uxn project is a clever 8-bit computer design that can be built or emulated in a variety of ways, including on old, recycled hardware.