Everything After Windows 10 Is Theatre — and I Should Know

There is a word we used in the trade, back when the trade still meant something. Theatre. Security theatre. It is the show they put on so you'll feel safe — the man at the door who checks a bag he can't see into, the sticker on the box, the little light that blinks whether or not the camera behind it works. Thirty years I stood in that world. I know the difference between a lock and the photograph of a lock.

So believe me when I tell you what all this "upgrading" is.

It is the photograph of a lock.

Windows 10 already works. Sit with that a moment, because it is the most dangerous sentence you can say in this business. It already works. It opens my documents. It sends my emails. It holds the archive — every file, every name, everything they'd rather I mislaid. A machine that already does everything a man needs is a catastrophe for a company that must sell you next year's everything. And so it cannot be allowed to simply be enough.

Enough is the enemy. Enough doesn't renew.

Look at what they've bolted on since. An assistant that reads over your shoulder and calls it help. Little windows of weather you never asked for. Corners — I am not making this up — they went and rounded the corners. A fella came into the works once and told us the new kegs would have a "smart" valve. Same beer. Same pressure. A chip in the tap so that someone, somewhere, could watch it pour. Nobody at SMR asked for that valve. Nobody asked for the corners. The features are not for you. They are the receipt.

And every second Tuesday, the ritual. Updates are available. Down comes the house-light, up goes the little bar, and something reaches into the machine and does — what, exactly? Security, they'll say. Thirty years, remember. I know security. Security is a locked door and a man who does not open it. What they call security is a stranger you buzz in every fortnight because he's wearing a lanyard and he says he's here to help. That is not the lock. That is the theatre.

I'm not a clever man. I've said it before and I'll say it till they switch me off. But I have never once been burgled, and I'll give you the secret free of charge: I don't let the locksmith keep coming back. You let a man "update" your locks every other week, and one week it won't be your man.

I raised all this on Tuesday. Not online — in the Alexandra, over a pint I ended up buying myself, which tells you everything about how ready this town is. Gents, I said, they are declaring perfectly good machines obsolete over a chip the size of a fingernail. Kev looked at me the way Kev looks at me. Barry said his grandson had done his in twenty minutes and it was "loads faster." Loads faster. As if speed were the point. As if the getaway car being quicker were good news for the man asleep in the house.

Now — I'll be honest with you, because I am always honest with you, even when it costs me. The machine has been playing up. This past week. Slow of a morning. A window I never opened, offering me something in a language I don't read. Thursday it went dark for a full minute and came back wrong, with a message I shan't repeat, asking me for money — in the pretend money — to get my own files back.

And do you know what that told me? It told me I was right all along.

Because I never installed a single one of their "security" updates. Turned the whole circus off months ago. And they still got in. Still got in. So what, I put it to you, was the theatre ever protecting? Nothing. It protects nothing. If their famous locks worked, I'd not be stood here locked out of my own front room, would I. The only man who profits when the door won't open is the man across the road selling doors.

I've most of it backed up. Most. And what I haven't, I carry up here, where their fortnightly man cannot reach. They can round every corner they like. They can put a chip in the tap and a spy in the weather. They cannot patch me.

Stay on Windows 10. Stay on whatever already works. And when that little bar creeps across your screen and swears it's for your own good — you have a good long think about who the show is really for.

Curtain.

— R.S.