[sdiy] Death of DIY?

[greg montalbano]

Not another universe -- another country, and another culture.

Here in the US of A, we're all bred from birth by the corporations
to be passive consumers;  if they do their job correctly, then we
reach a stage where it wouldn't occur to us to even IMAGINE anything
other than what they offer us.... they provide the products, they set
the standards & fashions.
This is what ELECTRONIC MUSICIAN bought into, when they became
essentially a monthly corporate mouthpiece (don't think about anything
except the products we offer you).
Speaking of rants, I could pursue & detail this line of thought for roughly
another twenty pages or so;  but that WOULD be OT.
Suffice it to say, in the US we're encouraged NOT to be fascinated by the 
way things work, or how to fix them ourselves, or how to create new things.

(and NO, this is not a "conspiracy theory";  there's no shrouded conspiracy --
the corporations are quite up front about how money is their true god, how 
MUCH of it they want to make, and what our place is in the greater scheme 
of things.  Nothing hidden about it at all;  it's just sad that there's so 
little resistance to it, and sad how anyone outside the standard consumer 
mold is considered a "crank".)

~GMM ,  cranky old fart
At 11:25 PM 4/23/02 +0000, jbv.silences wrote:
>Mmmmh... I'm not so sure...
>
>I too started DIYing in the late 70's as I was student (and had to work
>at night and on week ends as a taxi driver to afford parts).
>
>But these days, here in France, there are at least 5 different monthly
>mags
>about electronics featuring dozens of DIY projects (yes, about 60 to 75%
>of them are built around some uC but anyway), when there were only 2
>or 3 (and of much lower quality in the early 80's)...
>And the DIY fever seems to extend to robotics with 2 new mags...
>I guess there must be an audience somewhere...
>
>On the other hand, I see our young trainees at work, still students, but
>spending nights & week ends hacking old PC motherboards to build
>their own FTP server and the like...
>
>Am I living in another universe or what ?
>
>JB