Woolgathering on old -*art hobbies, was Re: TECH: 3D Printers == Santa Claus machines

From: Michael M. Butler (mmb@spies.com)
Date: Thu Jan 09 2003 - 20:42:37 MST


>>Another somewhat saturnine observation: it's another nail in the coffin
>>of hobby electronics--
>
>
> I disagree. This is the best thing that could happen to hobby
> electronics.

We'll see. If the cost per CC drops to some reasonable value, then the "fab"
side of personal electronics of course becomes easier.

But exploration and design get harder; thus my comment about desktop tomography.

Making the first thingy has a _big_ implementation hump when you compare it to
plugging stuff in a solderless breadboard, to cite a technology from the 1970s.

In the present day, look at doing a PIC-based project vs. wiring random logic.
Factor in the failure modes of firmware. It ain't the same, and maybe never can be.
Getting your hands on things helps to get your brains on. Or so I claim. I think there
is a lot of hapticity that goes away when you delegate too much to a Desktop Santa.

Also, right now, the impending outlawing of lead-based solder
(well underway in the EC, and expected here any day) is having some chilling
effect on old-style electronics hacking.

Then again, I bet there was a period of time when just about _nobody_ was making really
high-quality buggy whips--to use the wheezy analogy. Ham radio is in the dumper because
IRC Chat and its sequelae made it largely culturally irrelevant. Ave atque vale.

But mostly, I suspect there is a bit of migration away from actualy _doing_
hands-on stuff. "'Go Do' Considered Shameful" by John Walker was published
over 10 years ago, and it's still salient. The cultural bloom (in
the algal sense) left over from the boom.bust accentuates matters.
I look at the falling enrollments in engineering schools and
I wonder, glumly.

There's also the huge gap between what was considered cool when I was growing
up vs. what's considered cool now. Hard to homebrew a P4 mobo--impossible to do it
with a solderless breadboard.

That sort of stuff might still become part of, e.g., open hardware designs suitable for
Desktop Santa fab. And I hope so. But for now we are still waiting for the bus.

Now, contrariwise and counterpoint:

I wish I had real data on the cultural impact of LEGO Mindstorms.

Something like that approach, tied in with Desktop Santa, could be verrrry cool for the
tiny fraction of kids who get one and really dig in. But LEGO Mindstorms seems to have
sunk without a trace, apart from some MIT Media Lab and thesis work. Pity.

Re: what's considered coo:, in software, the Squeak folks are trying with might and main
to put a stake in the heart of "Hello World." That's a _good_ thing. I hope for
the same sort of stuff WRT hardware.

Note that all my comments are based on the little bit of the world I see.
There might be a whole crop of kids in Bangalore or Shenzhen who hack their
brains out (metaphorically speaking). If so, Ghu bless 'em.



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