If you took the title to its extremity it’s impossible to live in this day of age not having delegated some work to a machine. Take for example the delivery of this document, it’s highly unlikely a human is dictating it to you purely from memory. When I was writing about my email setup it started a train of thought that I wanted to formalise into myos. I’m interested in creating small machines that assist in completing a task. I want to reduce the amount of energy I expend on tasks i.e. I want to work less! 

   myOS / definition work
   Work is expending energy.

I am however what some may call a workaholic, following the above definition I can tell you that’s absolutely not right. I’m a taskaholic. I love seeing the results of my work fulfilling a purpose, and I am often (but not always) privileged enough to be able to choose tasks that fulfill a purpose that I believe in. Completing tasks I believe in gives me joy and does wonders for my mental state. 

   myOS / definition task
   A task is a request for work to create a result for a purpose.

   myOS / theorem 2
   To maximise efficiency towards reaching your goals:
     - only work for a task
     - only accept tasks with purpose that you accept as a human

If you don’t believe in encryption, don’t bother doing it. I personally do as is reflected in policies I have derived from earlier theorems. There is one more stop on this train of thought. 

   myOS / theorem 3
   Your energy resource can be extended to superhuman by delegating to other humans or machines.

   myOS / definition machine
   A machine is a tool capable of doing work to produce a result.

The above is simple but powerful. I can create machines, therefore I have the ability to increase my own capacity. To create a machine requires work. To efficiently create machines, they should be able to complete a task as their purpose. Completion of a task means to create a result, so the machine must be able to produce a result. 

   myOS / policy 2
   A machine is created as the result of a task. The purpose of the task is create a machine capable of completing another task.

myOS / policy 2 ensures that I’m not wasting energy making machines for no purpose. Machines don’t have to be complicated. A simple machine is an alias or wrapper for software. Doing this grants the flexibility of switching out backends to the machine without having to reconfigure systems that call upon it to complete tasks. For example, Table 3 in my last post will become:

Table 1: Machines that produce results to complete tasks from system myOS / email
Email Task Machine Result Backend Configuration Repository
Credentials encryption gpg-machine Decrypt string qubes-split-gpg myOS-qubes