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R.I.P for D.I.Y Or Long Live Open Source?
Embedded Geek writes "Scientific American has an article on the decline of science hobbyists. It presents a long litany of woe you'd expect about the "Good Old Days" (the death of classic electronic tinkering magazines, Edmund Scientific's corporate changes, and the cancelation of SciAm's own "Amateur Scientist" column), but also discusses some of the real trends in technology that have caused these changes. Declining manufacturing costs now make it cheaper to buy a telescope, radio, or computer than to build one yourself. The increased complexity of our gadgets doesn't help either (Ever tried to fix surface mount components with a soldering iron at your kitchen table? Don't!!)
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Personally, I found the tranformation of science amateurs into "quasi-professionals" intriguing. The Society for Amateur Scientists now holds sessions on how to publish research and how to claim tax deductions for home laboratories. Also, amateur astronmers are making great strides in comet discovery. Being that most of the people in the open source movement are software professionals, it becomes easy to draw an analogy between it and tinkering of yore.
it seems to me that the internet has come in where hobby tinker mags left off. there's TONS of information available on home-built electronics, not only free but providing easy access to the originator in case you have trouble. just email the person and get it from the horse's mouth.
Well to show my age, I was born in 1980. I had two electronics kits, out of which I built a radio that could pick up WGN and a buzzing thing. Electronics, however, never really caught my eye because in 1982 I had my own TI 99 which cassette player storage and cartridge games. It was far more fascinating then building a radio or buzzing thing, and it did a lot more.
By the time college came around, I considered EE but computer science had already made a larger impact. In college I've tinkered some with electronics. I helped fix a nintendo, a stereo and a light with an EE friend, but I was not convinced to change majors. The reason? Because as fun as it was to fix the nintendo, buying a new one is $30 and as fun as it is to do low level circutry for 2 days, its much more rewarding to have a complete working program in an hour.
Electronics is complicated, expensive and time consuming you just can't do it anymore without a degree. The majority of people who would be attracted to Electronics in the "old days" find Computer work much more accessible.
Lastly, you should all know my kids will learn basic electronics. I might not be into so much, but the hobbist still has some opportunity, although slim.
Rob
I remember when I was a kid, people actually used to be able to fix thier own TV's and stereo's. My parents had this really cool stereo that included a circuit diagram. (Who does that anymore?) Now adays it requires special training and tools to fix some of these things, IF you can even find spare parts. And if you do there isn't any guarentee that the parts will even be cheaper, than the cost of a new one. The compressor on my fridge goes out. I get a quote for $540 to fix it. I only paid 560 dollars for the thing brand new. I ended up buying a new one. The picture tube goes out on my TV. Well I didn't try to have it fixed. I just bought a new one.
The scale of economics in building consumer devices in 3rd world countries is so great that it isn't really worth the cost of having them repaired. It's often cheaper to buy an new one, and even if it isn't the new features available in the latest devices still make it worthwhile.
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You can't get many supplies for the hobbyist lab anymore. Lawyers and politicians have made it too difficult.
"Sorry can't sell you that, could be used to make illegal drugs." or "Sorry we don't sell that; you could get hurt and sue us." and "We use to sell that but can't anymore, forbids it."
And let's not forget the ever-present terrorist threat. Anyone with chemicals in their household more elaborate than vinegar must be working with terrorists.
BASIC on a chip with a few inputs and outputs.
I think they cost $10/each or $1 in quantities of a thousand.
This is hitting amateur radio hard. Most hams purchase their equipment these days; it's nearly impossible to obtain modern levels of performance on home built transceivers. (Well, that's a generalization; antennas are often homebuilt, and some diehards do build their own rigs.)
Why would people trade images with SSTV (slow scan TV, basically a codec for TV-resolution images sent over the radio) when they can email jpegs? For the most part, the people who do it are just in it for entertainment, not utility.
There is still room for tweaking; in fact, the amateur radio community strongly encourages it. Radios still usually come with complete schematics (pages and pages of schematics, in the case of some of the larger units in the local radio club's shack). But it's pretty uncommon to pull out the soldering iron these days and work on the actual equipment.
Better or worse? Neither. There will always be a small segment of the population that finds any given field (astronomy, radio, etc) exciting. New technology will just change their focus, but the interest is unlikely to go away.
-John, KG4RUO
> (Ever tried to fix surface mount components
> with a soldering iron at your kitchen table?
> Don't!!)
Why not?
I just soldered a couple of surface mount memory chips into my Tivo. Sure, the days of using a $12 Radio Shack soldering iron are long gone, but there are inexpensive Weller soldering irons that are well suited to todays ambitions hobiest.
Telling someone not to make that surface mount repair is adding to the very problem you are complaining about. Don't encourage people to be afraid to experiment and learn. You may not be able to make that repair, but that doesn't mean someone else can't.
-Chris
-- This sig is only a test. If this were a real sig it would say something witty. --
I agree. As has been mentioned on here in the past, the days of the garage shop startups like hewlett/packard is long gone. With all of the specialized hardware and test equipment required to develop anything of any signifigance it would be crazy to think someone would finance it on their own. Back in the day you might be able to produce a good wirewrap of a then high-speed circuit but what about now? A lot of items need to go straight from computer design to PCB to make sure noise is low, propagation delays are matched, etc...
My thinking is that the DIY people of this century will be working almost entirely in software. After all, the open source community is really just a community of DIYs.
... just shifted to different areas.
The essential learning aspect of the hobbyist modality is captured pretty well by the LEGO Mindstorms robotics toys(?). While it's true that machine language is a lost art, as is the construction of simple electronic devices, there are new frontiers available today that were not practical in days gone by.
Maybe in another decade or two we'll have do-it-yourself genetic tinkering...
I have had a hunch that it was slowing. I mean you can still do all the electronic tinkering you want. What I think is lacking is new Tools. I mean everyone has power supplies,oscilliscopes,DMM, and components. But I think what are also needed is some sort of Numerical Control for soldering VLSI/ULSI componenets onto boards, something that is impossible with a soldiering iron. That one tool If done cheaply and inexpensively could produce the break through to Electronic Hobbyist using DSP's, and uProcossors above the 6811 and Z80's. What could come after that?? Photo/chemical deposition of new circuits to buid new devices in your garage??? That would help as well. But if Amatuer engineering is on the decline than we in 5-7 years will see a massive shortage of electrical engineers at least from America. I don't know any EE today that wasn't into electronics as a hobby before they actually got their degree. Perhas it will be Robotics (not actual robots but just their industrial/numerical control counterparts) that will jump the gap and put modern technology back into the realm of the hobbyist?? Just my .02c
Ben
We're not all building Ham radios and grinding our own telescope lenses, but that's because we're so busy building our own aparatus for whatever interests us using the building blocks of the digital generation. 90% of my projects have nearly nothing to do with pre-1970's devices.
And when something DOES?-- well, ten seconds after I got my first Dobsonian 'scope, I began thinking how cool it'd be to rig it up with photocells, servos, a database and a real-time webserver so I could stargaze last night's sky any time I wanted (like at lunch!?). And two-thirds of how I'd do that isn't available from Edmunds. What's more, ten more seconds of searching on google (webcam astronomer) got me two such devices already implemented.
Folks are building their own fuel cells and hooking 'em to bikes, making wireless network antennas, turbocharged generators, stereo-to-PC integration devices, in-car-computers, personal VTOL aircraft, and more!
We're all still experimenting. That's what hacking is, in my book. We're just caught up in 'new' areas of discovery.
Oh, and Open Source has little to do with the urge to experiment. They may coincide, but either can live just fine exclusively of one another.
Its available on CD-ROM at the evil Amazon (hereafter to be refered to as Calisto): Scientific American's "The Amateur Scientist" : The Complete 20th Century Collection on CD-ROM
With the loss of the Amateur Scientist column along with Connections (my two favorites), I find little left in the magazine (excluding the usual hand-waving fluff) to keep me coming back. I let my subscription lapse 6 months ago; every once in a while, I'll browse the monthly copy at the local B&N, but I have yet to find a compelling reason to buy.
Meanwhile my home-built gravimeter sits quietly on the shelf, recording local feline Tachyon emissions...
Yeah, right.
SciAm's behaivor was completely uncalled for. Mims is a very credible source for electronic's hobbiests. His pencil drawn handbooks contain technical writing that is as clear and succinct as I've ever seen.
I would not take Mims seriously speaking as a creationist or Intelligent Designer or whatever they are going to call it next week. However, I take him very very seriously when it comes to electronics. Fair is fair, and there is nothing inappropriate about recognizing his electronics competence.
SciAm tarnished themselves by not recognizing this and gave creationists one hell of a talking point. Shame on them.
What an idiot. We have just largely stopped using magazines in light of the Internet.
I've learned almost everything I know about electronics from the Internet.
Look at these books! Look at them! All Free, as in Liberty AND No-Cost. These are some of the very best books I have found on electronics, on-line or off. Forest Mims the Third, eat your heart out.
Do we want to talk about mentoring and serendipity?
There you go.
If anything, I'd say that amateur science and learning and construction is more popular now, because it is more accessible.
It just doesn't take the form of magazine articles.
Im an ex prototype solderer, as part of my job I used to spend days hand soldering surface mount components on PCBs. It was a crackpot company and they didn't want to pay to have them machine done. I must say I tend to agree with the original poster's advice. Don't. I can't see these days.
Their action might have been more justifiable if Mims had a history of espousing his Christian views at inappropriate times and places. But he didn't. So in a sense, they punished him for thoughtcrime.
As an AC pointed out earlier, SciAm's behavior was neither "scientific" nor "American."
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
Uncalled for religious discrimination, yes. Atrocity, no.
Maybe, maybe not. I used that term because as scientists in the public eye, the editors of a major, consumer-accessible science magazine have a special obligation to behave in a way that's above reproach, scientifically speaking. When they fail to do so in such a blatant manner, it's at least a potential "atrocity" on the Pons and Fleischmann scale -- an event with substantial negative implications for the reputation of science as a whole.
Heck, one of the three inventors of the transistor was practically a card-carrying Nazi, but that didn't stop the Nobel Committee from awarding them their justly-earned physics prize. If a committee with a substantial contingent of Jews and ethnic minorities could deal with a certified asshole like Shockley, it wasn't unreasonable for the SciAm editors to do the same for a man who, in addition to being a well-known and popular science writer, has a reputation as a decent, agreeable, and generally unlikely-to-embarrass-his-associates fellow.
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
This is old news
/. headline is right -- the loss to the electonics constuctor community is the gain to the computer hacker (in the true sense of the word) community, and open source is the obvious beneficiary.
I prety much saw this and went through this in my teenage years (way back when).
I started out being interested in electronics -- and saw basic microcomputer projects occaisionally appear in the elecronics magazine as these incredibly complex designs that I (at the time) couldn't understand what they were about.
As I gravitated towards computers (which is where I ended up making my career, after a brief flirtation with Physics), I saw the increase in shelf space in the newsagents of the early computer hobbyist magazines, coupled with the reduction in shelf space for electronics.
I think the