Well put, Gary. Likewise, the days when young kids could get started in
electronics by tinkering with their parent's tube radio or hi-fi are
long gone. Open any piece of modern electronics and you'll find nothing
in there that can be worked on. Multi-layer circuit boards and
fine-pitch surface-mount components cannot be worked on by normal
humans, unlike the exposed wiring and great big grabbable components
that earlier products contained. I expect that old-timey ham radio
operators and DIY gadget builders notice that "kids these days" don't
know how anything electrical works.

--

Mike "Rocket J Squirrel" Elliott

On 8/14/2008 12:12 PM Gary Lee www.vwrack.com wrote:

> Today's young people may be mechanical nitwits, but I wouldn't say
> they are nitwits.  Not that anybody has, but I gotta stick up for them.
>
> Modern cars are very complex.  Complicated cars are harder to repair
> than simple cars.  Most people would also agree that with that
> complexity we also get far lower emissions and higher safety than
> vanagon era cars.  So it's easy to see why repairing one's own car is
> not within the scope of a lot of people nowadays.
>
> Want a simple car?  Too bad we can't buy third world market car in
> North america.  Like an Indian Tata, it's simple and cheap.  What you
> loose out on is comfort, safety and lower emissions.
>
> Gary Lee
>