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

[David Gilbert]

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 at 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
>   
>   
>