Good late afternoon as our beach weather has completely reversed itself from sunny looks like summer to gray skies and cool temperatures. This is the kind of weather that almost demands a mid-afternoon siesta. I'm currently reading The World of Ham Radio, 1901 - 1950 written by Richard A. Bartlett and the book's epilogue leaves me to question ham radio's destiny on this side of the Atlantic.
Bartlett stated in his epilogue that the development of ham radio essentially ended in 1950 thereafter everything that followed is mere repitition. He mentioned the following developmental stages that is creation, acceptance, and regulation finally achieving a state of permanence within our culture. Additionally, there is one great exception according to Bartlett, that is in the area of technology.
Does Bartlett correctly assert with the exception of technological advancement that the best days of the hobby are really behind us?
Perhaps, because I'm thinking of the Internet and its disruptive impact, much like that of wireless point-to-point communications developed by 20th Century pioneers. Bartlett asserted that the first fifty years of experitmentation and development were the most exciting.
I can say it is the Internet disrupting ham radio and not ham radio disrupting the Internet. It would appear at face value that the same is beginning to happen with that of the Internet -- experitmentation, development, acceptance, regulation, and permanence.
Can we ignore the slow acceptance of analog-to-digital communications using software defined radio in the 21st Century? What about the impressive menu of low power digital modes capable of the same point-to-point communications?
I'm returning to Bartlett's statement on page 231 that is, "Having been created, accepted, regulated, and achieved permanent status by 1950, the story after that becomes one primarily of repetition."
Lastly, I'd like to close with something that Bartlett gives as a think about in the final paragraph on page two hundred and thirty, "[B]ut compared with the first fifty years in which radio advanced from the incredibly crude to the incredibly sophisticated, the story loses much of its fascination. Those first fifty years constitute the truly exciting, adventurous, developmental era of amateur radio."
Bartlett succinctly summarized our deepest struggle in telling our social story not as an epitath rather nothing lasts forever that all endeavors typically follow stages from experitmentation to permanence. Perhaps, we are writing the chapter that Bartlett did not, where ham radio reboots itself at the crossroad of Internet point-to-multiple point and analog point-to-point communication? The result is going to be the domain of today's innovators, experimentors, and adopters.
73 from the shackadelic near the beach.
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