Termyn8or
Posts: 18681
Joined: 11/12/2005
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This sort of subject has come up before, but I never knew they actually had an "official" position on it. I don't know really if this is a good thing.
I don't want to speil about it but how many have never seen an eight track tape, but to amend that, magnetic tape at all. Or floppy disks for that matter. How many would get into an older car with a cassette player and wonder what the hell it is ? I have a secret for them. My CDROM case which holds some of my software and backup is actually a 5¼" floppy disk case. It was actually given to me by someone thinking "We don't use those old type floppies anymore", not realizing that CDs fit just fine.
Things change, from when they stopped making record players capable of playing 78s, to now when they don't make them at all. But is knowledge of these things arcane to the point it should be discluded ? That seems to be what these people are saying.
All the technolology developed over the decades sometimes seems to be the means to an end, but that is not true, it was the end. The olman told me we actually had a wire recording of the World Series when the Cleveland Indians won in the seventh game. A buddy of mine's family actually had a record cutter. Damndest thing I saw in a long time, a record player with two arms. If I could get my hands on that old wire recording it would be quite a project for me to build something to play it on, but being today of course I would burn it to CD.
My Grandfather was quite a shutterbug and had a movie camera, everything was on 8 mm or super 8. Recently we got something in the mail from my Uncle, the films he shot, converted to DVD.
There is only one thing that stays the same - the fact that everything changes, well almost everything. I don't think people have changed very much. The great unwashed are now washed, everyday people have things only the rich used to have. There are still shysters and slicksters, as well as people who will help their friends, as well as a stranger now and then. There are the greedy and the needy, haves and have nots. At the core, people are pretty much the same, we just have cooler toys now.
I am not so sure that's a good thing. People worked on their own cars, even TVs. Drugstores used to have tube testers and they would grab them and test them, when one tested bad they replaced it. Voila, it works. They did their own tuneups on their cars for the most part, and there was alot more to it back then than now.
All in all though, I don't think humanity has benefitted much from technology.It has made us lazy in the mind. I know that I am talking from a technological standpoint, and that is not the whole of the subject, but I think I am qualified to do so.
My Uncle and his one son actually built their own amps for their stereos, I have built a few but my specialty was car amps. I sold one to guy guy and I told him "Be careful, this thing is powerful", and sure as shit a few months later he shows up with blown speakers. I have also built a few other things, mostly specialised purpose test jigs.
Where has the desire to build and innovate gone ? Some answers may follow. I was going to build a piece of test equipment and I had high hopes. I thought I might even market it. Then I find out I can buy one for fifty bucks. It has been done for me. I might still build it one day because becoming familiar with what you can buy, I think my design is better. But I lack the ambition as long as my needs are met.
I know how to use a dwell meter. Most people who had Fords and Chryslers never heard of the thing. They would just set the point gap and consider it done. It wasn't. Remember dwell meters ? They had all these scales for four, six and eight cylinders, but the correct setting in degrees on each scale fell in place, and on the percentage scale it was sixty something percent dwell no matter the cylinder count. If there were digital dwell meters I would probably never know that.
Back then you could learn from technology. You could take a pin and an empty paper towel roll, stick it in the groove of a record on the player and hear it, you would know what sound is. With a CD it ain't happenin.
Certain aspects of technology have advanced exponentially, but people's interest in understanding it is gone. People used to be fascinated by their new toys and some wanted to take them apart and see what makes them tick, or whatever it does, but no more.
Select few actually know the new technology. This wonderful CD technology brought to us by Phillips and Sony, known as the CD, is now obsolete. Now there are DVDs which are just fine for audio recordings, can be better at it and hold alot more. Now DVDs are obsolete, they have the blu-ray disks now. Wait, those are also obsolete because they have come up with a multilayer disk that puts a blu-ray to shame. We are talking lots of terabytes, and the only reason they are not selling them is because nobody really has a use for them at this time.
So where are we headed ? To a world where people don't even know how to open the hood of their car ?
So the question is, is that a list of things to be avoided, or is it a list of things that when one does use them as a reference or refers to them, to expect to have to explain it ? If the former I deem it a bad thing, if the latter it's a good thing.
T
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The Beloit College Mindset List for 2012 is out. Your r... - 
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