[sdiy] Real cause of DIY death

[Richard Wentk]

At 01:59 18/07/2005, Paul Schreiber wrote:
>Simply put: lack of what people now consider 'amazing'.

Um, yeah - but when you grow up surrounded by little boxes that go 'doink' 
and have blinky LCD screens, none of it is amazing as such.

There's only really one kind of revolution, and that's when something 
*completely* new happens. The difference between a Moog and an electric 
guitar is huge. The difference between a Moog and a Korg Whatchamacalit 
X2000 Workstation is trivial, because all the Korg does is takes the 
*revolutionary* idea and repackages it with some added doodads and an LCD 
panel.

Similarly with cellphones. The *revolution* was the original idea of being 
able to talk at a distance. Being able to talk at a distance without wiring 
is just repackaging. The technology is a few orders of magnitude more 
sophisticated, but the *concept* is almost identical.

>Personally, synth-DIY for me was fuel by *amazement*. What does a 15yr old 
>boy find 'amazing' today? Getting to Level 33 on Zelda? Maybe big-ass 
>plasma TVs are pretty cool, bet they are a bitch to DIY :)

It's not just that you can't DIY them. They're not amazing because the 
underlying idea isn't new. It's just a TV in a smaller box with a better 
screen.

What's really missing is new ideas. There have been very, very few really 
new ideas in technology over the last couple of decades now. The last few I 
can think of are GUI interfaces, GPS, the Internet, and (in music), 
sampling. And all of those were originally designed or invented in the 60s.

In fact the last period of *real* revolution happened that long ago now.

What's frightening, if you want to get frightened, is that there are no new 
big things waiting in the wings. Gene splicing will eventually make a 
difference, and nanotechnology might, if it ever works as it's supposed to. 
But there's no real R&D reservoir to draw on now, and the rate of genuine 
deep and revolutionary innovation has slowed almost to nothing over the 
last few years.

Richard