CQ-Contest
[Top] [All Lists]

Re: [CQ-Contest] Will there be anyone to work in 20 years?

To: cq-contest@contesting.com
Subject: Re: [CQ-Contest] Will there be anyone to work in 20 years?
From: David Gilbert <xdavid@cis-broadband.com>
Date: Sun, 26 May 2013 10:35:23 -0700
List-post: <cq-contest@contesting.com">mailto:cq-contest@contesting.com>

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

_______________________________________________
CQ-Contest mailing list
CQ-Contest@contesting.com
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/cq-contest

<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>