The Best Way to Stop Fixing the Borfin Is Not to Start
Understandably, a paying client of mine doesn't want to use Microsoft Word. It was absolutely the best word processing system ever--until Microsoft got greedy and decided to offer it on a rental basis, even trying to disable the older versions for which people had paid. We all understand that these corporate employees have credit card debt to pay, for the Audis and penthouses and luxury-resort vacations they bought Before Coronavirus Panic, and they think they've going to be able to pay for all that by sticking it ("it," in this case, being the bill) to us.
So it goes. In 2019 the way to get writing jobs at any writing site began with having Word. Word went into a rental system. Now those of us whose stalwart, pre-Internet computers still have Word get, "Can you convert your Word documents to PDF or Google Docs?" Now "I have Word" costs me clients. Microsoft might as well give Word away with half a pound of tea...they'll need to do that if they want people to use it again.
In theory I could do Google Docs. I don't know, any more, because Google's competing with Microsoft on hubris these days. While people are still reeling from the sheer gall of Google's announcement that the "Chromebooks" computers they're trying to force on school children will become unusable in four years, this week Google decided to disable various features people have been using in their Chrome browsers and tell people those features are available only with "Chromebooks."
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Private people should own computers only if we use them for work--and mine have all been acquired secondhand from grateful clients. Private homes should not have Internet connections. People not using the Internet to run a business should be able to meet their Internet needs from public computer centers (which should be private, for-profit businesses, not taking up space in public libraries--and locally owned, too, independent of McDonald's).
Anyway, my client was using PDF documents. No problem! I had a PDF converter program on this computer! I don't have Word on this computer any more, although it came with Word, because the former owner had perhaps inadvertently allowed Word to "update" into the rental version. So? It has Libre. Well, Libre stinks, but it does read Word documents and save files formatted as Word documents, and it does make good-looking PDF. In six clicks.
At least on Tuesday it did.
On Tuesday afternoon I allowed Google to "update." On Wednesday I was offline most of the day. I did finish a section of the client's document, though. I clicked on the PDF converter icon.
It didn't open.
I reloaded it. I checked the connection. I reloaded it again.
It didn't open.
It had come from a site independent from Google. I didn't remember the address of that company so I typed in the name that appeared on the icon. Google pulled up lots of pages claiming that it was "malware" that "injected ads" onto web sites in your browser. Funnily enough the ads I'd seen in my browser were the standard annoying ad clutter coming from Google, Twitter, Yahoo, and the large companies' web sites I sometimes visit. I went back into the computer's history and found the web address for what I was using, which was slightly different from what appeared on the icon. Google reported, with a nasty hubristic smirk, that that program was a Google Extension, and Google Extensions would now be available with "Chromebooks" only.
Well...three months from now nobody will be accepting PDF documents any more either. No need for anybody to spend any money on PDF conversion-ware. For years people just accepted that the majority of computers wouldn't handle PDF.
These companies think they've sold us all a radical change in our way of life. They are wrong. Most Americans not only learned how to live, work, and have fun without computers, but feel that--if only because we were younger--we did those things better without computers. Going back might mean taking a lot of time to print out work some of us have failed to print out daily, but other than that, it just might feel like taking off the shoes that pinch.
Not on everybody's list of favorite Dr. Seuss books, but on my long list, anyway, is one called Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are? in which a narrator presents ridiculous situations of people who are sure to be worse off than the reader, like poor Mr. Bix:
"Poor Mr. Bix! Every morning at six,
Poor Mr. Bix has his Borfin to fix."
The Borfin was a complicated machine whose function was unclear, so readers could chortle, "Why doesn't he just throw out the silly Borfin?"
Adobe is a Borfin. Google and even Microsoft just might be Borfins too. The minute they stop running smoothly, reliably, impersonally, free of hassles and free of charge, we should all be able to remember that in many ways life was actually better without them.
I can't say I miss re-inking typewriter ribbons, nor do I miss the clunky look of documents transcribed on a typewriter relative to those printed on the HP Laser Jet, but typewriters worked without a hitch or a glitch for years and nobody ever came into your office and broke them in the hope of forcing you to buy new ones.
And in fact, while I've often felt at a disadvantage relative to other bloggers--I don't have a lot of real-world friends who use the Internet, have some who've been trying to nag me out of using the Internet for all these years--I'm at an advantage relative to other pre-Internet newsletter-ers. When everyone had to use real typewriters I offered a $500 reward if anyone found a better typing service. Nobody ever claimed that money. I enjoy the speed and convenience of the Internet, but if the corporations implode it with their displays of hubris, I'll be cleaning up the money they lose. Bwahahahaha.
I don't like wondering whether the Internet will collapse this summer or this winter, but the mere fact that Congress considered a bill to fund it as a "necessity" (see Senator Warner's newsletter earlier this week) tells me that it needs to go down fast. If anyone really thinks the Internet is a necessity, where's the legislation to limit those never-ending "updates" to the cloud and make sure they don't stall anyone's work? What about limiting updates to the hour between 3 and 4 a.m., local time, on the 29th of February with a fine if they're noticeable at any other time?
We don't need to take the word of an outsider, a specialist speaking on someone else's specialty rather than his, like Dr. Mercola, to tell us that the Internet was designed to be the instrument of tyranny. Those who followed this web site's reading recommendations already knew that from the insider Al Gore. Some of us may have remembered it from the prophetic vision of old Grandpa George Orwell.
Paper needs to be the primary medium of communication. Cash needs to be the primary medium of exchange. And although the Reagan Administration did manage to stop one inflationary spiral without restoring the gold standard, pinning cash to the gold standard wouldn't be a bad idea either.
In the next year or so, if the Internet lasts that long, we are likely to receive junkmail telling us how wonderful it'll be to get broadband Internet service right in our homes! And subsidized for the "needy"! No need to sit and wait at the computer center, or sip warm Coke or cold coffee at McDonald's. (But letting the cold drinks get warm and the hot drinks get cold is the secret. Of course they taste boring! That makes it easier to sip them more slowly, so that one cup or glass can last ten hours if you need it to!) Just tell Big Government now "needy" you are, and you'll get subsidized service, just for you, with your personal information pre-stamped into everything to make sure you can read or post only the content Big Government approves and make sure nobody mistakes you for someone rich enough that they want to act nice to you, to keep you voting for more socialism and more subsidies until all the lights go out, worldwide, because a socialist economy can't afford electricity for very long.
Don't fall for it, Gentle Readers. Even if Robert Kennedy is elected President in 2024...God bless him, he is the Irish Chieftain of Glyphosate Awareness, but he's also a politician...government needs checks and balances, and so does the Internet. One of those checks and balances is anonymity. You do not want any kind of Internet service in your own individual name, or linked to the address of any place where you ever sleep, or connected to your phone--or even linked to your school records. All Internet connections are physically traceable in the event that, e.g., a burglar broke into your office at night and started streaming live video on Facebook of how he was going to burn down the building--but, in the absence of a warrant for investigation of a crime, all Internet connections should show no contact information beyond the city name. That's one way we stop crimes before they happen--including the crime of corporations offering free service and then demanding that people switch to paying monthly subscription fees for it. Never, never, never put your real name on anything connected to the Internet.
When we all use public access computers--which should ideally be managed by local entrepreneurs in for-profit computer centers, NOT squeezed into public libraries (where they don't fit well) and NOT operated by corporations and, MOST NOTLY OF ALL, not subsidized by government--maintaining a healthy, crime-preventive anonymity is easy. All you have to do is remember a screen name, which can be as simple as the name of your favorite flower plus your high school locker combination.
When we set up accounts, even "free accounts" offered in exchange for allowing the corporations to send us spam trying to sell us the "paid version," we have to go all the way to set up a business in order to maintain that healthy anonymity. Just at the level of not advertising to terrorist drug cartel members where to find your grandchildren, you don't want anything on the Internet ever to show your home address. "Where can we send your free gift?" Don't fall for it. They can send the gift to the post office, or they can send it to a store that's open to the public. Your screen persona doesn't know anything about your home. Home? What's that? Screen "avatars" live in cyberspace. They don't have homes, don't need homes, and don't know where to find the home of anyone you know either.
(Another tip, which I didn't know about when I adopted the first cat picture as my AC "avatar": If you use a human face as your "avatar," some people will claim to feel they trust you more. Do you trust them more? I don't. My experience has been that face-starers are not worth the trouble of knowing. If you use a human face, what will happen is that you'll get lots of messages from people who claim to be physically attracted to your image. I'll stick with a cat picture, thanks. You could use a flower, or a landscape or a swirl of color.)
When we pay for things online, the only way to make that different from parking your car--and probably a few friends' cars!--with the windows down and the keys in, is to use giftcards you purchase with cash. Never agree to let anyone send you recurring bills. Not even to your virtual business, if you find it worth the trouble to set one up. Use real mail and postal money orders, also purchased with cash. It's a good idea, whatever the future may bring, to phase all plastic payment out of our lives.
The Internet has been fun for all these years, but if we don't stay vigilant, block all efforts in the direction of either government or corporate tyranny, and insist that the Internet remain free of charge, anonymous, and profitable to the private individuals who use it, it can easily become worse than Al Gore's craziest fantasies. Because, in real life, after it's sucked all the money and real-world business and real-world pleasure out of your neighborhood, it will go schlump, like poor Mr. Bix's Borfin.
Don't buy the Borfin, Gentle Readers.
If the software's not guaranteed to last the life of the hardware, don't download it.
If the hardware's not guaranteed to be fixable for at least twenty years, don't buy it.
If the words "account" or "subscription" or "monthly payments" are used, hit CTRL-W.
None of us got rich on the coronavirus panic. None of us needs a Borfin to fix.