Re: Woz interview

[mjmahon@aol.com (Michael J. Mahon)]

Paul Guertin replied:

>"Tim Haynes" <trhaynes@yahoo.SPAMBGONE.com> wrote:
>
>> I would say that there is still room for technology to be amazing.
>
>Sure. I'm too young to have experienced it personally, but from
>reading old books I get the feeling that radio, and TV later, used
>to be fields of homebrew tech prowess and late-night hackery before
>becoming the advertising-distribution appliances they are today.

There are several factors bearing on the ability of modern technology
to "usefully amaze" those who encounter it.  (I distinguish "useful
amazement" from the sheep-like kind that accompanies astrology
and "new age" crystals.  ;-)

One is that for a device to be "usefully amazing", it must be possible
to disassemble it sufficiently to perform "interesting" experiments
with reasonable levels of economic and physical risk.  Many modern
devices no longer permit this kind of access to, say, a 12-year-old who
approaches it casually.  Integration levels are up, component counts
are down, interconnects are multi-layer, and packages are sealed.

Radios and TV's used to be readily disassembled and played with.
There was a major business in diagnosing their problems and fixing
them--a fertile training ground for future designers.  I was fortunate
to be shepherded a bit by a neighborhood TV technician, who showed
me how to find and fix even the harder problems in minutes.

Today, most consumer electronics items are throw-away technology.
It is seldom economic to have an item repaired, both because of the
low cost of replacement, and because of the new features available
on devices only a couple of years later.

This situation bodes ill for a society dependent on technologically-
savvy innovators.  Most technical hobbies are flagging, and only a
small fraction of young people are willing to make the investments,
both monetary and personal, to achieve even moderate fluency in
hardware design.  Even software design (except for scripting) has
become sufficiently complex that rewards--doing something that
will amaze and delight your peers--are hard to come by.  (Compare
this to the situation Woz lived, when Pong was "amazing" and
built entirely out of Radio Shack TTL.)

When I was growing up, photography was black and white, and
a darkroom experience was just $35 and a weekend away.
Chemicals were easily available from pharmacies and supply
houses for home laboratories (now, they are all "toxic chemicals").
Electronic components and subassemblies were readily available
both from jobbers and supply houses and from neighborhood
trash.  Electronic kits for useful test equipment were widely
available and reasonably priced--and educational in their assembly.
Radio Amateurs were visible and their ranks were growing (although
even then, requirements were being lowered to attract new blood
after the post-war infusion of radio technicians subsided).

It is well known that for a problem to be "interesting", it must be
in a certain range of difficulty for the potential solver.  If it is too
easy, it will be seen as trivial and uninteresting.  If it is too difficult,
it will be seen as impossible and uninteresting.  A problem we
all face today is presenting technology's opportunities in such a
way that the future technologists are challenged by them, so
that the pace of imagination and innovation do not slacken.

Our future standards of living depend on it!

-michael

 Email:  mjmahon@aol.com
 Home page:  http://members.aol.com/MJMahon/