That's exactly the reason why I curse myself for not going into an engineering highschool and university and becoming a professional electronics engineer -- on top of being a programmer.

Nowadays I feel like a helpless puppet in the hands of vendors that want to make their tech transmit as much data as possible to their servers. I am not even sure the TV I have at home (and to which I didn't give any internet access) can't secretly negotiate a connection with my router.

I too feel that some of us have to start collecting some older tech just in case.