Re: Hobbyist electronics courses... extinct?

On Mon, 9 Jan 2006 17:15:31 -0500, "Charles Schuler"
<charleschuler@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>Hi Jon: Interesting post.

Thanks. There are many other experiences I didn't detail, such as the
many small and good local stores I could go to which included
wonderful tables chalk full of cheap parts from transformers to
transistors. All gone.

Most science/technical hobbies are hard to maintain these days because
of the lack of access to really top-notch minds in local areas where
you can really interact and learn, the loss of really top-notch
periodical after periodical for hobbyists to learn from (the really
top of the industry authors, I may mean), and the consolidation (if
not the complete loss to zero) of companies sincerely catering to
hobbyists in the local area and elsewhere.

>Community colleges have always been sensitive to local employers and that is
>probably a good thing.

I can't disagree, in the sense that a focus on supporting people who
need to advance their work-a-day, real lives (read as, perhaps: wage
slave) is a good thing. As I said before, I really don't understand
all the influences in the changes. I am pretty sure that TV and the
loss of time that has meant for tinkering and learning by direct
experience with nature (going out and seeing what nature shows you
cannot be replaced by TV shows) has something to do with it. When
people spend a significant part of their lives watching entertaining
content on TV (broadcast or DVD or whatever), that is time they are
NOT experiencing and learning from the ultimate teacher -- nature. I
am pretty sure that another is that there is a smaller and smaller
percentage of really top-notch folks because fewer, as a percentage,
are selecting strongly technical fields to pursue. But also because
one once could actually _take_ an undergrad course in physics from
people like Feynmann and today, such people are simply inaccessible at
any level -- often forcing the universities they lend their name to,
to license public patents they worked on at the university to their
personal companies where they spend a great deal of their time -- not
teaching.

My own physics teacher in high school had a Ph.D. from Northwestern!
We built large scale crystals from Styrofoam balls wrapped in aluminum
foil and used a klystron to 'illuminate' it with hand-held watt meters
to measure data points and develop an idea of crystal diffraction.
Where is that going to happen today? We would take 7 or 8 field trips
each year into the field -- geology, biology, etc. Today? Schools
are over-hopeful to do just one science field trip a year.

Etc.

>With electronics courses and programs, it's mostly that modern stuff is
>non-repairable for economic reasons. If you can't fixt it, economically
>speaking, who needs the techs?

Yes, but what if you just _like_ electronics and math?? And just want
to learn to improve your hobby skills? How you get into an
interactive learning situation, then? Used to be that you could.

>Also, engineers used to have techs working
>under them for breadboarding and testing their designs ... now, computer
>modeling and simulation have eliminated much of that. Techs used to lay out
>circuit boards ... now done by CAD programs ... and so on and so on. Hard
>to find blacksmiths, too ;>)

Or woodsmiths who understand the fine details of good crafting, pietre
dure, inlay and marquetry and parquetry, etc. I have a breakfront
that's 8'3" high and breaks down into various pieces, including four
doors (two glass+wood on top, two all-wood with inlay etc on bottom),
top mantel piece, middle mantel piece, bottom section, top section,
and so on. All these pieces were built 1894. There are no nails, no
screws, nothing used when I re-assemble after moving. It has been in
many places, many humidities, abused, used, etc. In all this time, to
this very day, I can disassembly it and reassemble it and the top
doors close so closely fitting, yet not touching each other, that
there is a "puff" of air as they close neatly. Everything still fits
together with that kind of precision, more than 110 years later.

Find anyone with those skills today. Good luck. Yet that breakfront
was a commercial product and isn't a one-of-a-kind. It is, actually,
not uncommonly made, though it wasn't cheap crap either, for its day.

>Add to that the fact that the USA has abdicated manufacturing in favor of
>importing from the Pacific rim and China and you have new missions for
>community colleges. I note that they are now offering lots of health
>related courses and degrees. And business and law.

Service instead of manufacturing skills. Not a wise trade-off, long
term. Eventually, you can't make anything.

I know it's hard for investors, looking at 2 to 3 years out for making
a "killing" on their investment, to allow a company to seek the long
term. And time and again, I've been personally involved at some level
with companies starting out as highly technical and making something
"really new" only to have them gutted out by the investors after two
or three years, converted to service or re-selling (using what they
learned to buy from others, but no longer even try to produce),
letting go all their technical resources except maybe one, etc.

Making things is hard. It takes knowledge. And that itself is hard
to develop. And all that takes time. And there simply is no time
left to a business, anymore. So they have no choice but to give up on
producing superior products based upon superior knowledge and hard-won
experience -- because those things _take time_. So what's left...
service/selling.

>There is nothing equal to an experienced mentor when learning something like
>electronics. But, that's the way it goes. Life goes on and one can only
>hope it's going somewhere that we'd like to be.

When those minds die, they take it all with them. We need to get a
brain dump before that happens.

There is a process where incredible amounts of knowledge are lost
through death every day. And we need to pump in at least that much
knowledge back into the babies born. Or else we lose ground. Better
would be to pump in MORE, each year, than we lose. But I don't see
the commitment here in the US for even treading water, let alone
making incremental progress.

Oh, well.
Jon
.

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