Since the last 20 years there have been a constant push to put everything imaginable into the cloud.
This is convenient to people because all their stuff is immediately available on all their devices, because it out there in someone else's computer. People basically no longer need to even manage files (copy them onto drives and move the drives around), everything is taken care of, everything is syncing automatically.
This is convenient to corporations because the code of their programs can run on their servers and as such it is impossible to pirate. They can also make these services a subscription that over time costs way more to the user than an one time purchase of a software. And of course they will have all your data, and they use it to train AI, to predict you and ultimately to manipulate you into whatever they want.
People nowadays grow up with smartphones in hand, and cloud apps are their baseline experience and expectation for digital devices and services.
Many teens nowadays do not even understand what files, folders even are. If they even have a PC at home, it's either a glorified gaming console to play stuff on Steam, or a machine they do homework on at best. Most entertainment activities are basically phone and tablet only.
PCs are not banned but people are abandoning it. Owning hard disks, SSDs and pen drives are not banned, but people prefer to store all their stuff in Google Drive, OneDrive, etc. Most ISP's give you either a routable IPv4 or a routable IPv6 address. So you should be able to self host things and access it remotely. But people never wanted to bother with this.
I'm afraid the future is a dystopia where absolutely everything will be in the cloud. Every photo you snap is instantly uploaded, every video you record is immediately streamed up to your storage. All documents and notes you create will be created on cloud platforms such as Office 365, and will be up there from the get go. Even your diary you won't share with anybody will be seen by the platform and will be used to train AI, or used to manipulate you to buy something when you are in a bad mood. You will have 0 expectation of privacy. In past people prayed and were careful what they were doing, because their "god" can see everything they do, but that was just a belief. Now it's more and more becomes a fact, because companies and governments can observe and analyze everything and everyone just happily give all their data to them, because it is convenient.
Majority preference eliminates the choice. If people no longer buy PCs, they will no longer be made.
High end smartphones already have the ability to be connected to a thunderbolt dock, and be used as a desktop computer. I expect that PCs will morph into gaming consoles that run on a locked down hardware and software for anticheat reasons and will be running Steam games. If you want a Desktop PC, there are plenty of virtual desktop services available, privacy is not included of course. At that point PC parts can no longer be bought, only rack servers, which are priced for enterprises and are unaffordable for the average person.
If this transition happens, the war for "general computing" is lost, and with it the digital privacy will die out as well. Showden warns, Cory Doctorow warns, but no one listens.
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