Michael Agarkov’s Offline Manifesto

February 17 2024

I cannot sleep at all right now. I keep thinking about the future of computing. What will happen when Windows 10 will lose support? Most of my computers don't support Windows 11, yet still can be useful. What will it be when all software will stop supporting Windows 10? After thinking about this for long enough I came to the conclusion that being able to run a computer without being connected to the internet is perhaps the most important thing out of all. Being able to do things without needing constant support or internet connection is best. The internet may be unusable on old systems, but as long as you can use the system, it's useful. If Windows 10 will lose support, I can disconnect all my Windows 10 machines from the internet and create a local connection for them to avoid security exploits. That also brings me to a conclusion I once already came to. Autonomy is key. Needing no constant internet access is way better than having one as a neccessity. Computers are perfectly usable without internet connection, so, why is it otherwise now? As long as we have all the software we need, we don't need the internet. That sounds insane, but a multi billion dollar company, namely Microsoft, apparently cannot keep supporting Windows 10, and because of that this future can become a reality to some. We are moving towards a spooky era of computing, an era of AI, of uncertainty, of instability, with no autonomy if we won't do something about it.