xrongor wrote:

there was once a time where people actually fixed things. not just bought a
new one and replaced it, but fixed things. if they didnt make exactly what
you wanted, you made it yourself. it was assumed you knew how to look at a
problem and solve it. look at old popular mechanics magazines for one
example. heck, they practically assumed you had a welder in the garage.
and you know what, you probably did.

ah but times have changed. thinking has become a thing of the past.
spending is the new thing.

every time i suggest anything requiring some thought or innovation, one of
you guys comes out of the woodwork and attacks me for being 'unsafe' or just
plain crazy. it gets tiring trying to explain myself to you one track
minded idiots that have long since lost the ability to think. maybe there
should be a seperate group called
alt.home.pay.someone.to.fix.it.cause.i.cant.think. for.myself.

i give up. just toss it and buy a new one. if it doent exist, pay someone
to do your thinking for you. i figure at the current rate of knowledge
degredation, its only a few years before everything simply becomes
disposable anyway. we arent that far off now. the plug and play house and
the disposable education.

randy



I'm suprised that no one has yet noted that the technologies we have
grown to depend on have gotten far more complex and expansive that they
were a couple of generations ago.

When I graduated as an electrical engineer I considered myself pretty
much a "renaissance man" in that dicipline, as there wasn't much around
other than AM, FM and shortwave radios, TV, radar and a little bit of
what they called "industrial electronics" back then, and a competant
engineer could get comfortable with any of those in a short time. Look
at what the world of electronics has become now. A smart person can
still comprehend the purpose and function of most of it, but no one
individual can have usefull detailed knowledge of more than a small
portion of it.

Back then, (I'm talking the 50s.) the "electrics" in homes (and the
appliances in them) were pretty much just collections of fuses,
switches, light bulbs, motors, heating elements and maybe a solenoid or
two. Easy stuff to learn to understand and fix. Not so today, eh?

I could go on about how much more complex vehicles and machinery have
become, but you get my point (I hope.)

Add to that the vast change in the economic dichotomy between the
"haves" who owned stuff and the "have nots" who fixed that stuff for
them, and even a minor hired repair can seem like an economic disaster
to most people. That tilts the "fix or buy new" decision in favor of
tossing stuff out.

Another factor which comes into play is that our insatiable appetite for
aquiring more goods than we really need (by confusing want with need)
keeps many of us working longer hours or even two jobs just to pay for
all the junk our families "absolutely positively" have to have. That
doesn't leave us with as much time as our forbearers had to fix stuff,
or even learn how to fix it.

Like a few others on this thread have pointed out, there are those of us
(and I most definitely include myself here) who just enjoy fixin' stuff
for a hobby, without making any pretense of that having any serious
economic practicality. Hey, lots of guys like to walk around for half a
day swinging a club at a little white ball on the golf course, and some
guys collect stamps. To each his own.

With regard to the totally technologically challenged who really
shouldn't be messing with stuff which can kill them or someone else, I
can only remark that the expression "Fools rush in where angels dare to
tread" was around long before Edison developed a practical light bulb,
and will probably still be valid a few generations from now if we don't
blow up the planet by then.

Just my .02,

Jeff

--
Jeffry Wisnia

(W1BSV + Brass Rat '57 EE)

"As long as there are final exams, there will be prayer in public
schools"