Dragging out that old, tired, and mostly erroneous accusation of
"instant gratification" is totally missing the point. I spend a fair
amount of time myself playing online multiplayer games, a genre that is
predominantly comprised of people in the age range of 14-35 (pretty much
the same age bracket that hams belonged to about 50 years ago). Guess
what one of the dominant themes in most of those games are ... it's
called "progression", which means starting at a very low, almost useless
level and having to scratch and claw your way up the ladder as you
acquire and learn how to use new and more complicated skills. It's a
process that can take months for a new player, and trust me ... it's WAY
more complicated than memorizing multiple choice answers for a license exam.
Want to know the fastest growing demographic for video games, out of the
100 million or so who play semi-regularly? It's women with a median age
around 30. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't characterize women as being
lazier than men.
http://www.theesa.com/facts/gameplayer.asp
http://www.theonlinemom.com/secondary.asp?id=2106
http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/More_videogame_players_moving_online_survey_999.html
The simple facts are that video games today offer a much more compelling
way to efficiently and effectively interact with others around the globe
than ham radio does. There is no way that ham radio is going to be
relevant to today's youth like it was to us. All in all, ham radio is
the least reliable, most restrictive, most limited, and most expensive
way to communicate with anyone else short of a large scale natural
disaster ... not to mention having far greater barriers (license,
neighborhood restrictions, building permits, etc) to participation.
There is simply no comparison.
o Ham radio is far more expensive.
o Ham radio has far worse quality than Skype or cellphones (which are
now a gaming platform in their own right).
o Ham radio is bulky, predominantly fixed, and requires a significant
amount of exterior hardware that can be problematic in many housing areas.
o You can't share music or pictures with decent resolution via ham radio.
o Worldwide, there are at least 1,000 cell phone users for every
amateur radio licensee, and that ratio is probably closer to 10,000 when
considering active hams. The ratio is much higher yet when you add in
PCs that can do anything a ham rig can ... except better. If you want to
interact with someone ... anyone ... why limit yourself to a very small
fraction of the world's population?
o Applications like Skype are free, available worldwide, and provide
FM quality voice from any PC to anyone anywhere in the world anytime of
day or night. If you really want to communicate, you don't rely on the
F2 layer.
o Ham radio is one-dimensional ... pretty much all you can do is
talk. Cell Phones and PC's allow active interaction (such as via
multiplayer games or other features) that create a rich and dynamic
environment instead of simply a conversation. In any modern online game
you are immersed in colorful graphics that are simply amazing, and you
interact with the environment and multiple other players directly and in
real time.
o Contesting in ham radio is an isolated activity ... you sit in a
chair for as many of the 48 hours you can physically tolerate doing the
same rote activity over and over, while your competitors independently
do the same thing. In online games, you compete directly in real time
by anticipating your opponent's moves and abilities, countering them,
and attacking with your own abilities ... often trying to utilize a
complex environment to your advantage. It's a multiple dimensional
activity that involves establishing your own strategy (often as a team)
and trying to counter the strategies of your opponents. The closest
analogy I can think of for radiosport is if we had the ability to
somehow decrease an opponent's score in real time during the contest
through our own ability or by offsetting his. I've tried to think of
ways to do this but so far I've not come up with much.
o Ham radio no longer is a vehicle for learning anything relevant to a
future career. There is some impressive technology in today's ham rigs
but I'd bet there isn't a soul out there today who would decide to get
into ham radio so he/she could learn how to write DSP software or
program an FPGA. It mostly works the other way around ... hams who
learned those things elsewhere decided to apply them to their hobby.
Having a ham radio license listed on your resume isn't going to elicit
any better consideration than antique car restoring or skeet shooting.
Playing a video game isn't going to get you hired either, but at least
the platform you're staying familiar with (PCs and cellphones) comes
from the current century.
I can pretty much guarantee that almost none of us, if we were kids
today, would take the trouble to get a ham license. The ONLY thing that
ham radio in general can claim in it's favor is that there isn't a
subscription fee, but that is pretty much irrelevant when you consider
that cell phones, PCs, and connections to the internet are going to
exist in great numbers without ham radio anyway. Think we can convince
anyone, even ourselves, to toss their cell phone or PC and rely strictly
on ham radio?? Good luck with that.
There is indeed one aspect of ham radio that has some enduring merit,
though, and that is contesting. Competition is competition no matter
the vehicle, and some of the relative negatives of ham radio (scarcity
of participants, unreliable propagation, etc) actually become part of
the appeal. The problem is that represents a VERY narrow slice of the
world (partly because there are so many vehicles to engage in
competition ... heck, there are even competitive BBQ events), and ham
radio at a competitive level simply is not accessible for very many
people. Most of us on this reflector love to contest via ham radio, but
that's because we grew up with ham radio ... not because we were seeking
competition and decided that ham radio was the most effective way to
satisfy that itch. I guarantee that it isn't ... a $250 PC will open
up far more opportunities to reliably compete with far more other
participants in a far more complex environment far less expensively than
ham radio could ever dream of.
In my opinion, our hobby has strictly niche appeal and in spite of the
misleading license figures it is a dying one. As best I can tell from
the limited figures I've seen the average age of hams now increases
almost two years for every three years that go by. Look at pictures of
hams from any recent convention (Dayton, Visalia, etc) or club meeting
and compare them to pictures from thirty years ago ... it's almost
shocking. I'm all for encouraging new people to join ham radio, and
especially for encouraging existing hams to become contesters, but it is
delusional to think that we can do much of anything to significantly
affect the overall demographics. There are simply too many better options.
Even worse, it's ridiculous to blame the situation on "a desire for
instant gratification by the younger generation." That's such a
head-in-the-sand misrepresentation that all it demonstrates is how out
of touch most of us are.
Dave AB7E
On 5/26/2013 7:10 AM, Cqtestk4xs@aol.com wrote:
...and you forgot one other thing.
Today's young people live in an instant gratification society. Why spend
time studying for a license to talk to someone in Russia when you can do it
today on Skype. I applaud the efforts of those who are doing lots of work
to encourage people to get into the hobby, but it is a tough battle.
Bill K4XS
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