[sdiy] Death of DIY?

[Scott Gravenhorst]

Amen, Paul.

I'm one of the very people of whom you write.  I was raised
on "Popular Electronics", the 1940 ARRL handbook, and my dad's
fishing boxes full of resistors & caps (most pulled from curbside
junk) and a huge box of "fire bottles".  I'll be damned if it 
wasn't the "gee whiz" of it all that kept me interested.  Even
a hifi pentode preamp.  Power on -- Nothing exploded -- IT WORKED!  
(used often to amplify the output of my crystal set)

And Paul, you are SO right about all the distracting, crappy, eye 
candy "toys" that kids have now.  Yesterday, I declared a "no screens" 
day for my son to see what he would do.  In a word, he was lost.  I 
was the meanie bad guy who faught against my (now 9 year old) son 
getting a Nintendo 64.  Gee, a couple of years later, now my WIFE is 
complaining about how much butt time he has staring at that evil 
contraption.  Legos?  What's that?  Uh, son, it's that set of colored 
plastic (DIY) bricks over there (my guess is over 10,000 pieces) ...

DIY is mentally stimulating and healthy.

For my son, I try to instill DIY tactics where ever possible.  He
wanted his own web site to keep things he likes.  I told him he 
had to learn HTML.  He's doing it, but dang, I forgot to tell him
about HTML generators.  He *codes* HTML at 9.  They can do it.
There will be more "no screens" days...

"Paul Schreiber" <synth1 at airmail.net> wrote:
><<note: I am an old fart>>
>
>The slow death is due to several factors, including:
>
>a) lack of the great "gee whiz!" factor in people under 30yrs 
>old. I think many of the DIYers were in grade school in 1970 at 
>the height of Moog Mania. A nice stereo was 8 months of saving 
>(only doctors and RICH PEOPLE had credit cards). Ham radio was 
>still a large DIY community. b) affluent parents. All you young 
>pups have computers by the time you are 12yrs old. You are so 
>ingrained with Nintendo/PS/etc that you can't even comprehend an 
>Evans & Sutherland graphics cabinet that used to cost 
>$1.3million, and have LESS power than a GeForce2. You get cell 
>phones, MP3 players ,and cracked copiesof Reason. The parents of 
>us old farts had NOTHING. You had to EARN (gasp!) money, and at 
>$1.25/hr DIY was looking good. I was estatic in1977 when I gota 
>job for $4/hr and could send Digikey like $15/month for parts to 
>build Electronotes circuits. c) lack of patience. Stuff doesn't 
>work, and you are actually better off to fix it. There is one 
>WONDERFUL thing about eBay: it totally destroyed the 1980-2000 
>era of rip-off test equipment dealers. Tek 465s for $150? GET 
>ONE!! Put it on Daddy's VISA card :) A friend just bought a $3400 
>HP freq counter (new in 1985) for $45 and it works *perfectly*. 
>Pre-eBay, I personally spent over $46,000 on test equipment. The 

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-- Scott Gravenhorst | LegoManiac / Lego Trains / RIS 1.5
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