A Thing I Couldn't Live Without

This week's Long & Short Reviews prompt was "a thing I couldn't live without." We've had that one before. I almost didn't do it, but then I thought I might as well...

Water.

You can't live without water.

I can't live without water.

Huge corporations can't build those "data centers" to store, and abuse, all the information foolish people put into "the cloud" without very large amounts of water. And electricity. And air conditioning.

Likely, to keep their computers going, they'll use up enough water and electricity that there won't be enough for the rest of us to go on living our lives. And so on.

Why even speculate about the bad consequences? Let's just accept that "data centers" are intended to provide jobs and an economic boost for one year, two at most, and then decrease the number of job openings and depress the economy after that. I know of no American neighborhood that needs that effect. We need to stop racing with China toward an economic cliff, and instead, step aside and plan to help China recover from its fall.

How do we do that?

Very simple. We don't need to listen to the partisan political bickering about how this allegedly necessary evil is to be regulated, in which way will do us, personally, more damage. We need to make the evil unnecessary.

Don't put any more information into "the cloud."

Use a simple phone that doesn't try to be a computer, or none. Don't use flatphones. Try to avoid touching them--they can be used to gank images of your fingerprints for nefarious purposes. 

Use a computer with physical data storage, or none. Don't put data in "the cloud."

Demand printed bills, and pay bills with cash. Don't give people with whom you do business an excuse to put data, especially not your financial data, in "the cloud."

I believe (I could be wrong) that if a critical mass of Americans are religious about these three things, we may be able to save the Internet and our personal, Net-free home computers that are still running Windows 95. 

Tablets, flatphones, Windows 11, QR codes as a pretext for discriminatory pricing, Handmaid's Tale nightmares of mass confiscation of funds and deletion of accounts for individuals or groups--out they all go. Simplify your electronics. If it was rolled out after 2016, it's probably "cloud-based." Tell the company to stick it up their nose. 

Don't buy new electronics unless and until the manufacturers get back to cloud-free equipment that's built to last. Nobody really wants to store data on tape for pity's sake, or even on floppy disks, but if it doesn't have a hard drive and a port for stick drives, leave it in the store.

Too bad if this disappoints Donald Trump, but he's from the generation that's never really understood or appreciated computers anyway, and his decision to cling to notions about "the cloud" performing the economic miracle our system of checks and balances won't let him use tariffs to perform...well, it came from desperation and from ignorance. Empathy is appropriate. Empathy, but not indulgence.