Imagine a computer without internet. It's way less useful. Everything that matters is online now. Pottering wants to get rid of /home on Linux for example. You can even do all that stuff online by SSHing a much better computer.
Would you mind using Linux? It's been my experience that it's done everything I wanted it to well. Linux on desktop has changed. I hated it too in the 2000s. Now mostly everything just works, KDE can look and feel like any desktop including OSX. Very reliable.
You'll find a pirated version of XP running as you wish soon since the leak of the XP source code not GPL though.
Yes. Online provides very little cues of action, therefore requiring the people to state their actions. When primative man was done with his work, he was content to do nothing, but not in society today where we are cogs in a machine working for society.
It is said that keynesians and free market economists both would find themselves at the ire of other intellectuals. Taleb lamented that economists are rated by other economists so we can't be sure they're correct. Even the greatest economist said that economists are not reliable.