[GeoStL] Caches, ham radio and experimental aviation
- From: Mike Lusicic <lusicic@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: geocaching@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2010 16:07:40 -0600
-
What Jim says about the old days reminds me of a parallel in ham radio.
A lot of the old timers thought that ham radio went to pot when they
allowed voice communications. The old "brass pounders" saw beautiful
melodies in the rhythm of morse code, which by the way is NOT morse
code, it is the International Telegraphy Code. They say the neophytes
who had trouble "getting" the code were ruining the radio waves with
their talking.
Then when CB came along, a lot of guys there got disgusted with the
"idiots" on CB who were jumping on that bandwagon and were looking
somewhere to have a decent conversation, and we had a flood of CB
converts hitting ham radio, and the old rag chewers on the ham bands
complained about the airwaves going to pot, and lamenting the days when
being a ham was special and anybody you talked to could be counted on
for a good interesting conversation.
And then there were also the "contesters" whose interest was
participating in contests to see who could make the most contacts. Who
could contact the most different countries, and so on. These guys
exchanged basic information as fast as they could and moved on to try to
"work" someone else. On a contest weekend, you could have trouble
finding an open frequency to try and have a good conversation on. Like
trying to find a good quality location for a cache when everybody and
their uncle has already staked out their tenth mile "no cache" zone
around a cache placed a month after getting into caching or other such
complaints heard concerning caching.
Even in experimental aviation. When the government finally realized they
should allow people to build their own aircraft (again), the people who
did pretty much designed their own, or borrowed other people's ideas and
built from scratch. Today those old guys see kit planes being built and
some of those people are cheating and hiring people to build the
aircraft for them completely trashing the original concept of
experimental aviation.
I think if we look long and hard enough, we will find similarities in
many areas and interests. You start out with a core of people who were
unique and had a certain personality and attitude to get things moving.
Then the masses hit, and everything is brought down to a least common
denominator that is constantly shifting down to the chagrin of the
golden oldies who began the activity. It is like the law of entropy in
physics. Everything will devolve to its simplest form.
So bucking the trend in caching is going to be like trying to fight the
law of physics. You can hope for it all you want, and you may seem to
change things, but in the end, you are only delaying the inevitable. All
you can do is make yourself comfortable and enjoy the ride, and then get
off when you lose interest. Or go start your own activity, or form your
own club and define your own rules. You are not going to change those
that have already conceded to the masses.
So yeah, maybe we don't need to hear the same complaint over and over
again because it isn't going to change anything, and it aggravates a lot
of people. But hey. It isn't like we should expect that not happening
any more than expecting that caching will not reduce itself over time
like so many other things. When you open up an activity and try to
recruit more people into the activity, the things you do to make it
easier for them, lowers the "effort" bar, and you get people who did not
put much effort into it after they are in. The same happened in ham
radio. The same happened for experimental aircraft. The same happened
for .... you fill in the blank.
This is not an complaint or a condemnation of anyone or anything. It is
merely an observation that I find interesting. If anyone else would like
to have an intelligent discussion about this, then by all means, join
in. For those who cannot see an intelligent discussion being of any
benefit to them, then by all means, feel free to ignore the thread.
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