Anyone Have a Sturdy Sabot I Can Smash This Thing With?

I have issues with computers.  I mean we all have the virus and trojan issues; we all have the pop-ups and unsolicited advertisements.  We all deal with them in one way or another.  But this is not what I mean.

We were sold into the computer age with the promise of a more efficient and easier life,  This turns out to be largely poppycock.  More information more readily available, yes.  Too much information too freely shared.  But again, this is not what I am on about.

I am mad at the people who make and sell the computers and the software.  I am mad because they misrepresent reality and sell our dreams down the river for their own perfidious ends.

Here is the crux of the matter.  For years I maintained a neatly organized four-drawer steel file cabinet.  Yours might have been oak or walnut, but the purpose was the same.  In it I filed papers that I wrote or collected and wished to keep.  Want a document?  Go to the cabinet, open the drawer, go to the file, and voila! there is the document just as we left it a week ago, a year ago, a decade ago, or even in some cases forty years ago.

So buying into the promise of convenience, upon acquisition of a computer I started writing and storing my documents on the hard drive and on ancillary hardware sold for the purpose.  You know: floppy disks, diskettes, thumb drives and so on.

As the industry grew and changes became head-spinningly rapid, we allowed ourselves to grow with it.  I mean, who wants to be a troglodyte in the information age?

Now as I moved from one device to another or one platform to another I judiciously transported stuff I wanted to keep from the old equipment to the new.  Makes sense, doesn't it?  No, it does not.

And here it is.  I have documents on my current device which I wrote originally in Microsoft Works.  I kept them because I wanted them.  And I still have them.  Ostensibly.  But I cannot open them.

And as for floppies and diskettes, no way to read them anymore.  Old hard drives?  Doorstops.

Cf the automotive world.  Autos have changed tremendously in the past seventy years.  But I can still drive a 1930s car.  I can drive a modern vehicle. Would that once learned one could always drive a computer.