On 2013-08-04 21:45:44 +0000, Hils said:

On 2013-08-04 20:03, Michael Black wrote:
And like I said, that's some of the hype of the maker movement, more
people can follow instructions, but it doesn't raise them up.

I've been going through old magazines, a local bookstore having found a
stash of them. The skill level to build the projects was much higher
than in "Make", but it was a whole wide field. "Build a two man sub for
about $400" says an article in Popular Science from about 1968. YOu
can't tell me the kids have invented something new when building things
had such a large infrastructure decades ago.

My father had been a mechanical engineer during WW2, and my older
brother's first jobs had been in engineering and later aerospace. My
father started teaching me maths and engineering when I was about four,
but I think he became rather disillusioned when I started school and
they insisted on teaching me their curriculum at their speed. Still,
between them they'd taught me to solder before I left primary school,
and I'd been repairing radio receivers for years before I eventually
got an amateur radio licence.

My uncles seemed to be forever discussing engines and how to get the
best performance from them. My brother bought Practical Wireless and
Practical Electronics, and occasionally Short Wave Magazine and
Wireless World, I remember one PE project that stuck in my mind was a
home-made EEG.

The young people closest to me now have piano lessons, violin lessons,
ballet, yoga, rugby and cricket lessons, but they're learning no
practical skills because their parents (about the same age as me) have
almost none themselves. My mother's sewing machine rarely seemed to
stop working; their mother buys everything off-the-shelf and replaces
rather than repairs. Their father collects electric guitars, but he
pays a technician to modify and repair them and refuses all my attempts
to teach him basic electronics and soldering. When his electronic car
key stopped working recently he paid £200 for a replacement.

People generally have become users not makers. I sometimes feel an anachronism.

Blame EEs and their amazing invention, the SMT component, for reducing
the amount of practical uses for electronics skills. Have you looked
inside a piece of modern electronics? There is almost no ability to
modify or even understand the circuit.

An electronic car key is almost certainly not reproducible in a
practical sense, and recent legislation may even make it illegal to try.

Gen Xers are not the ones who passed these laws.