Why deliberately use less technology?

Because heavy infrastructure can be costly, fragile, and inaccessible to many scholars and communities. Minimal computing prioritizes solutions that are sustainable, maintainable, and usable under limited resources, broadening who can participate in digital scholarship.

Minimal Computing and Infrastructure Critique

Much digital scholarship assumes fast networks, ample servers, and abundant funding. Minimal computing asks what can be built with the least possible technology, while infrastructure critique examines the often invisible systems — classifications, standards, servers — on which digital work depends.

Definition

Approaches that critically examine and reduce dependence on resource-intensive digital infrastructure, encompassing minimal computing for sustainable and equitable practice and the study of infrastructure, classification, and standards as value-laden systems.

Scope

Covers approaches that question the resource assumptions and hidden systems of digital scholarship: minimal computing and its emphasis on sustainability, accessibility, and global equity; and the critical study of infrastructure, classification, and standards as consequential, value-laden systems. Includes attention to labor, maintenance, and the global distribution of digital capacity.

Core questions

What is the least technology needed to do meaningful digital scholarship?
Who is excluded by assumptions of abundant computing and bandwidth?
How do classifications and standards shape what can be known?
Who maintains digital infrastructure, and at what cost?

Key concepts

Minimal computing
Sustainability
Infrastructure
Classification
Maintenance
Global equity

Key theories

Minimal computing: Gil and others advanced minimal computing as doing digital humanities under constraints of access, infrastructure, and sustainability, favoring lightweight, maintainable, and equitable solutions.
Infrastructure and classification as consequential: Star and Bowker showed that classification systems and infrastructures are not neutral but embed values and have far-reaching social consequences, often by becoming invisible.

History

Star and Bowker's Sorting Things Out (1999) founded a critical view of classification and infrastructure. Within the digital humanities, minimal computing emerged in the 2010s through GO::DH and related groups, responding to global inequities and concerns about sustainability and maintenance of digital projects.

Debates

Ambition versus sustainability and equity: Whether richly resourced digital projects are worth their cost and fragility, or whether minimal, maintainable approaches better serve scholarship and global access.

Key figures

Alex Gil
Susan Leigh Star
Geoffrey Bowker
Jentery Sayers

Seminal works

starbowker1999
gil2016
sayers2016

Frequently asked questions

Why deliberately use less technology?: Because heavy infrastructure can be costly, fragile, and inaccessible to many scholars and communities. Minimal computing prioritizes solutions that are sustainable, maintainable, and usable under limited resources, broadening who can participate in digital scholarship.