Back To [BASIC]s

I was intrigued today to come upon the work of Canadian programmer Virgil Dupras, who like many of us, is concerned about the increasing disappearance of basic skill sets from whole generations of people as we enter an increasingly machine-assisted and dependent non-repairing era; from the use of basic hand tools to, as in Dupras' world, fundamental programming skills. His thesis is that we have entered a period of such environmental, political and economic instability that things could unravel pretty quickly at almost any time. I would suggest keeping a close eye on the current chaos that the Trump government in the US has set in motion as a litmus test as to how things might just pan out if we are not mighty careful. Dupras maintains that if it all does go pear-shaped, then we will be left without the basic wherewithal to repair our damaged infrastructure and systems in order to rebuild some semblance of civilised society out of the wreckage. Apocalyptic? It might sound a tad hyperbolic, but it could so easily happen: there are already lots of chaotic systems heading towards a head-on crash, so who knows?

Whether you have any sympathies with the prepper mindset or its prognostications of Armageddon and its immediate aftermath or not, it's difficult to ignore all the madness out there at the moment, and at least Dupras isn't going down the guns'n'bunkers route - living in a very rural part of Canada, he's pretty self-sufficient anyway, having turned his back mostly on high tech already. His main point is that if and when our systems crash for good - and we already experience serious complex system outages on an increasingly regular basis these days - there will be almost no-one around with the tools for the job in order to rebuild stuff to at least a basic level of functionality: remember, if the computers go down big-time, we lose pretty much everything we take for granted. No money, no supply chains, no communications, no vital services such as gas, electricity, water or sewage treatment, to name but the most immediately punishing. And no-one to fix the glue - the computer network, AKA the whole deal - that holds everything together. And we've achieved this total dependency in just half a century or so.

So what has Dupras been working on since his epiphany? Software, of course. And not just any old software, but an operating system of such primitive simplicity and small size that it is capable of being installed on practically any of the hardware that might be left intact after all the unmaintainable stuff has gone south. It's intended to be simple enough that it can be operated by anyone with a base set of programming skills - he prefers the term 'operator' to 'user' as he intends it to be the hammer or hand axe of its realm: fundamental, basic and capable of being used to generate an increasingly complex chain of computing and networking tools to at least kickstart the recovery process. All laudable and very logical, but what fascinates the inner geek in me is how he's gone about it.

He has named the operating system Collapse OS [eponymously, after the catastrophic societal event], and it is aimed squarely at some pretty old-school hardware, all of it 8-bit [seventies vintage microprocessors] that are still available in their squillions, either in complete, obsolete computers, just as individual chips or even these days as hobbyist boards costing just thirty-five quid/bucks/euro/whatever. Multiple platforms are targeted, including one I've written about before, the MOS 6502 that powered many of the early standalone home computers of the late seventies/early eighties, many of which are still in serviceable condition to this day. He's also made a version that runs the thing on modern processors, which he sees as a prophylactic intermediary whilst we've still got modern working systems on which to work up the backups to the apocalypse. A remarkable effort, methinks. His website is commendably Web 1.0 in its approach too: I recommend it highly. 

BTW: I've only just remembered; I started this daily scribble five years ago on the 27th of March 2020...