On Sat, 8 Jun 2002, blacklord wrote:
> This must be a US thing, in general, in Oz, they seem to be a much more
> knowledgable bunch. But, the drift has been away from electronic
> components to consumer electronics, that's the market these days, so
> you can't really expect them to know much about things other than that.
You basically hit at the heart of the matter. The reality is that US
society on the whole does not do hacking at a hardware level anymore
(which I suspect is the case in other parts of the world) and Radio Shack
has responded by evolving into yet another typical consumer electronics
showroom.
Over the past two decades, we have gone from a nation of builders to a
nation of users. We throw away perfectly good items because perhaps a cap
blew or whatever it is was "just too old". This is the work of Capitalism
and Marketing. It used to be that we encouraged people to learn and do.
Now we encourage people to buy and expend.
We are the last bastion of a bygone era. Revel in your own obsolescence
;)
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
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Received on Fri Jun 07 2002 - 23:55:36 BST