Interview: Devine Lu Linvega and Permacomputing

Devine Lu Linvega is, among many other things, an artist and programmer. Along with their partner, they live on a 10-meter sail boat, traveling the world in what Linvega describes as a nomadic, "solarpunk life". Along the way, they explore and practice principles of repair, maintenance, frugality, and other principles reflected in concepts such as appropriate technology and permacomputing — the latter is a subject on which Linvega has written and spoken, At the time of our conversation, their boat, called Pino, was docked off of Vancouver, BC.

Doug: How did you and your partner start sailing?

Devine: Before sailing, we were basically living in downtown Tokyo, and it was unthinkable. Sailing was something neither of us had ever tried, and it's not something we were familiar with. Basically when we started we were thinking that we could just keep doing the same things we were doing before, and when that didn't work out, it’s basically how we stumbled onto the concept of permacomputing, because what we were using didn't work anymore. You can't just be an Apple developer offshore; that basically doesn't work, and as we went, we met other people that were also learning about this at the same time as us. 

When we arrived in the Marquesas, there was someone else struggling at a little internet hotspot, basically, at a small shack that sells fruits outside. I was sitting there trying to upload a build for a broken app, and right next to me someone else was going through the same thing, and he was frustrated because you would run through the data plan in half a second, almost instantly, and be like, ‘fuck, I have to change cards.’ We were both in this cycle of learning about limits, basically crossing over a boundary where we can't do what we needed anymore, so we had to think about alternatives.

We use different tools now, and a completely different philosophy. We used to be all on Apple devices, and now I can't even imagine using Apple devices anymore. It's just a different approach, different tools, but it works just the same.