Some people Out There may reply, "Who wants a Net-free computer?"
A lot of us do. The Internet is to some extent a surveillance device that spies on what you do in your own home. When you connect to the Internet only from the office, or from a public place, where you go online to do research or use social media, there's no rational reason to object to, e.g., Google keeping a record of what Google is used for, or Twitter keeping a record of what people do on Twitter. But if you have a private, wired, non-networked computer and printer in your bedroom, and use it for things like writing personal letters, keeping track of your personal budget, or maintaining a private dream journal, you are likely to object vigorously to Google tapping into that computer.
For one thing, many of us object to other people being able to use the Internet to see all the holes and stains in our favorite pajamas...or whether or not we wear any. Before marriage, although that was in the pre-Internet years, I used to think I needed to be modestly dressed even when I was alone in my own bedroom. I don't know what the thinking behind that was--"If the house caught fire you wouldn't want to take the time to pop a dress over your head before you ran out," or "If you saw yourself in the mirror you might be guilty of the sin of looking at a naked body--your own," or, more likely, "If you always wear some sort of clothes, even if they're special styles that everyone in your culture recognizes as having been designed exclusively for wearing in your own home and would frown on your wearing when you go out to collect your mail, chances are good that you'll be buying at least two more complete dresses or pants suits every single year! Ka-ching!" One of my husband's and my frugal house rules was to wear clothes at home only if we felt chilly without them, and since we mostly lived in steamy coastal Maryland we saved a lot of money on the sort of clothes that wear out quickly because they absorb so much sweat. The air can absorb much more sweat without needing to be replaced. I don't particularly care if the young men at Google are watching my body age, or seeing the stacks of creative clutter around my desk, or watching me recycle empty food containers to gush blood into after exposure to glyphosate, because I feel that anyone watching that sort of thing deserves to feel as disgusted as I'm sure he would, but many people do feel that way. Even though we'll never have to meet the young men at Google socially.
For another thing, our society has not done nearly enough toward treating nannyism, let alone searching for a real cure. The pills I use (vitamins when I'm not having celiac reactions, charcoal when I am), the amount of porn I watch online (pretty close to zero), or who else may be in my home (relatives, and yes, we put on some sort of clothes before being in the same rooms) are not the usual focus of these wretched people's helpistic reactions. People who use drugs (yes, alcohol, and aspirin), watch porn, and have overnight visitors may feel differently. We as a society do need to be more vigilant about, when someone squawks "I want to help those people" (any people who are not asking for that specific individual to help in a specific way), making sure that person is confined and supervised until person can focus on person's own life like a decent human being. We need to be making them write numbered lines of "Other people are adults. If they want my help they will ask me for it," and checking their penmanship, and making them do the pages over if they deviate from the models in their copybooks. At present, with all the untreated nannyism out there, none of us is safe from victims of nannyism who might begin screaming "Those poor people only ever eat toast for breakfast. I want to help them discover the joys of shopping for boxed breakfast cereals!" and we need to open a national conversation about ways to address this problem.
But why I really want to keep the Internet out of my main computer is a different concern...Google "updates." Before Windows 10, Internet connections were subject to periodic disruptions for "updates" a few times a year, and the programs we actually used for everything but connecting to the Internet was stable: you learned how to process words, numbers, or graphics using the programs of your choice, and that was the way your computer worked. I LIKE THIS. The less I'm thinking about the computer, the more I'm thinking about what I'm using it to do, and the more useful the computer is. A computer that distracts people from what they're using it to do is worth less than an old rusty Underwood typewriter, and should be replaced by one .But since Windows 10, Google and Microsoft have been allowed to interfere with whatever we do online, while "updating" themselves, daily. The "updates" never end. Nothing works the same way it did the last time we used it. We need a federal law about this. Google and Microsoft need to be told in no uncertain terms that, if we (or our company or school or sponsors) paid for the computer and for the Internet connection, that makes us THE OWNERS, and if they interfere with THE OWNERS' use of THE OWNERS' PRIVATE PROPERTY, the computers and Internet connections, THEY OWE THE OWNERS MONEY. If Google or Microsoft want to "update the system" in any way that it's possible for us to notice while we're browsing or typing or reading or whatever we do, they should have to send us an e-mail...
"Dear Lord and Master THE OWNER,
This service wants very, very badly to tweak some feature at a web site that might require a window to be closed and reopened. The results of our self-gratification in this matter (will) (will not) be detectable at your end of the connection. Because this is so inconvenient to OWNERS, but our worthless little inferior brains are so obsessed with it that we can't sit still and think about our jobs without wanting to try it, may we humbly beg you, please, of your great compassion, to indulge us in this "update." We will not bother you with another request like this one during at least the next five years. We understand that during our next few '"update" fits our supervisors may lock us in rooms away from computers and force us to focus on useful tasks or be terminated with bad references, We will not be allowed to move forward with this "update" until you verify receipt of ($100 in cash for changes that will not be detectable at your end) ($500 in cash for changes that may be detectable at your end, such as unrequested color changes) ($1000 in cash for changes that may affect the way buttons work). We are extremely grateful for your consideration to our insane emotional cravings to tamper with YOUR PROPERTY.
Without your confirmed consent, WE ARE NOT ALLOWED TO CHANGE ANYTHING ABOUT THE WAY YOUR COMPUTER WORKS. If you bought the computer in 1982 and you choose to continue using the same word processing system you used in 1982, WE RESPECT THAT whether our wretched excuses for brains are capable of understanding it or not. We are operating in Penance Mode for the amount of electronic waste that has gone on since the 1980s. We are not allowed to sell new computers or phones until ALL the old ones we convinced people were 'obsolete' are fully operational and in use. We may not be allowed to build any more electronic devices during our own individual lifetimes. We know that the easiest way to avoid wasting electronics is to avoid trying to add any new bells and whistles to them, and we know that it will cost us money if any 'updates' we offer cause any OWNERS' PRIVATE PROPERTY to require repairs.
But we really want to tweak something, please, please, we beg,
Your pathetic, attention-deficient, brain-damaged, twitching servants at (whichever corporation)."
Maybe the fees for "updates" should be even higher than that, because of what happened to my reliable, Net-free computer last summer.
I was copying a page of a printed document into a computer file, and suddenly the computer blinked and started displaying the screen sidewise. It was the first time this had ever happened. I didn't know what to try, so I just shut down the computer, disconnected the monitor I'd been using since 2006, connected the emergency backup monitor, turned the computer on again and resumed typing.
A few weeks later, the computer "died."
I took it to the shop. It could be fixed right away, but it took me the whole winter to scrape up the money to pay for it.
It worked well, but then in March it blinked and started displaying the screen sidewise.
This time I asked the computer some hard questions about what it was doing and why. It admitted that the little logo showing that it had no Internet connection had disappeared. Once allowed to extend WiFi connections into the neighborhood, the local company was not satisfied to connect to the one device an OWNER had authorized it to connect to--my laptop. (It had not been authorized to connect to the Professional Bad Neighbor's "smart truck," which he's avoided driving into the neighborhood after realizing that it was connecting his truck to my laptop.) The company had been trying to tap into my home computer, too. What was causing the screen to display sidewise was...an update!
I reset the computer back to a reset point, and before opening Windows again I reset all the settings that seemed to have anything to do with the Internet, instructing the computer that it was NOT TO CONNECT TO THE INTERNET IN ANY FORM OR FASHION, NOT EVER. Got that "no Internet access" icon back. This computer is allowed to store documents on its own disk drives or to print them. It is not authorized to release anything into "the cloud."
But I just happened to check it this morning, and "Local Service" and "Network Service" and the "spooler" program that prints documents to files at an unidentified connection point, were running on it. The tentacles were sucking. My original, classic, functional, Internet-free Office programs could be destroyed again.
Microsoft really, really wants to steal what people paid good money for, twenty years ago, and force people whose jobs depend on having MS Word to rent some garbage version of Word that is subject to episodic "updates" and that has been tweaked into a travesty of what people mean when they say "MS Word." Specifically, every few weeks, they make it harder to get rid of Ugly Nasty Wasteful Webby-Looking Document Format.
We probably need a law specifying that the default setting for all computers and printers must be to print on both sides of each page, with no more than 1/2 inch margins all round, no wasted spaces between paragraphs, in the smallest font THE OWNER is willing to read. I'm not saying that people don't have the right to choose to use the amount of paper they think their documents need. I am saying that, when people have set their computers and printers for a default format that conserves paper, Microsoft should be prevented from trying to change that format. I ssve quite a lot of money by using justified margins and indented first lines to avoid wasting a space between paragraphs, and I want it recognized as THEFT for Microsoft to interfere with the default formatting on my computers and printers in a way that costs me money at no benefit to me. "Update" my computer in such a way that one printout costs me one sheet of paper? Pay me a thousand dollars, cash in advance, for anything that could by the remotest chance allow that to happen, or go to jail!
Microsoft should probably be required, when adding Net-free Word and a printer to all computer purchases, no exceptions, to initialize the printer by setting up "OWNER'S Normal" format, and then require, when printing documents off the Internet, to offer to convert them to OWNER's Normal format automatically. On a screen it may be easier to glance at huge wasteful fonts, 12-point, 16-point, 20-point as web site administrators' eyes wear out, but when I print them out, 8-point Times Roman is actually easier to read than 18-point Arial. And it'd suit me fine if the whole Internet agreed just to stop printing anything that was not supposed to be a poem with uneven right margins, remove any extra spaces from "paragraph breaks" and require extra spaces to be manually typed in as "section breaks," and just spare the world from anybody ever having to look at Ugly Nasty Wasteful Webby-Looking Format except, perhaps, in "legacy" documents about greedhead companies that used to try to cheat people on printing costs even though that provided no direct profit to them.
What can we do to keep the Internet out of our computers? I don't know. Theoretically it should be easy to build computers that have no modems, connect them to their own dedicated printers, and just make sure no stupidphones are allowed in our homes. I'm sure the snoopers will look for ways to interfere with that, too...and we need laws recognizing it as a crime to connect the Internet to anything without the specific, time-limited, permission of an OWNER. Anything that contains a chip that can connect to the Internet needs to contain a switch that breaks the connection whenever the OWNER is not actively using it. An "Internet of Things" has the potential to be fun, but one of the ground rules needs to be that the "things" cannot be connected in any way that might cost any OWNER money.
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