I suspect the world would be better if that percentage were even greater.
Is technology good for ham radio?
Over at G4ILO’s blog, he responded to the recent Wired article about ham radio by asking “Is technology good for ham radio?” with his answer being “no”.
G4ILO’s Blog: Is technology good for ham radio?
The statement which caused me to blow milk out my nose was this one:
The more high-tech ham radio becomes, the less magic there is.
I must admit that such statements cause me to roll my eyes. Ham radio wasn’t ever magic. It seemed like magic, because it allowed you to do something which you couldn’t imagine doing without it: communicate with others over hundreds or thousands of miles. It’s hard not to think of this as magic, a quote attributed to Einstein (but as far as I know unverified) goes:
“The wireless telegraph is not difficult to understand. The ordinary telegraph is like a very long cat. You pull the tail in New York, and it meows in Los Angeles. The wireless is exactly the same, only without the cat.”
That makes it sound very much like magic, but it’s really not, and moreover, it never has been. On my desk I have a copy of The Principles Underlying Radio Communication, a really nifty little book put out by the U.S. Army Signal Corp. The first edition was published in 1918, and you can read it online via Google Books (my own copy is dated 1921).
If you bother to read this book, it isn’t magic or alchemy: it’s engineering and science, harnessed in the service of human communication. You’ll learn about currents and resistance, about Ohm’s law and batteries, about capacitance, magnetism and inductance. And because this was in the days just after WWI, you’ll see the use of alternators to generate radio waves, and the first hints of the use of vacuum tubes (the most cutting edge of technologies for its time). Amateurs were following right along through all this. If you surf the QST archive available from the ARRL, you can see that dedicated amateurs were tracking these amazing developments with incredible rapidity and skill. The history of amateur radio is one of technological adoption, not historical preservation. It was about challenging one’s self to do something that seemed like it would be beyond the realm of what could be done by individuals, working on their own with resources limited by what they could afford.
To me, amateur radio is about setting personal challenges, and then working to achieve them. I’ve called it “going boldly where others have gone before”, and if that seems odd to you, consider that you might want to see the Louvre, or Westminster Abbey, or Chitzen Itza with your own eyes even though you could just buy books and read about them. It’s about learning and growing and sharing with people of similar interests, and I see technology as only enabling more of that.
G4ILO maintains a webpage and a blog. If you surf over to his page, you can see a picture of his shack, which has at least nine radios which contain microprocessors. (In fact, I don’t see a single one which doesn’t.) I suspect you’ll find a couple more microprocessors in the visible power supplies and tuners. If technology is bad for amateur radio, I wonder why Julian seems to possess so much of it? If technology is such an anathema, a threat to the magic of amateur radio, then shouldn’t we all just go back to alternators, audions and spark gaps?
Technologies like cell phones and the Internet are incredible tools to bring the world closer together, and to allow us to communicate and share our part of the human experience. When we talk in hushed tones about the good old days when amateur radio was king, we just look foolish.
I do agree with Julian about a few things: I’m not a fan of D-Star, not because it uses the Internet (the Internet significantly extends its utility for hams) but because it relies on a patented technology which must remain forever (well, until the patent runs out) beyond the realm of experimentation and deployment. But the problem isn’t one of technology: it’s one of ownership. I also think that the ARRL (which does do a great many good things) doesn’t serve amateur radios best interest by promoting it mostly as an emergency radio service. As other communication technologies become more pervasive, it seems clear that amateur radio’s role is shrinking over time, and even if we were to reverse that trend, we’d basically be simply duplicated a radio network that could be provided by the government or by private industry.
Technology can be scary, but it also can be exciting and empowering. Let’s embrace technology, rather than drag our heels and complain that we can’t understand it. Let’s rise to the challenges that we have inside us to learn, to experiment and to embrace.
Comments
Comment from James, N9XLC
Time 2/15/2011 at 8:47 pm
Seems like I’ve seen several articles along these lines in the past several months, even before the WIRED article. I agree that technological progress is nothing to fear for ham radio. There is room for the old school modes and styles of operation, yes.. but it seems to me like progress of the art is being held back by nostalgia. Maybe it’s the community trying to maintain the uniqueness of it by avoiding technology that exists in commercial systems? The argument being that (quoting Julian) “There is a danger that the pursuit of technology could turn ham radio into a poor copy of existing communications networks.”
It’s my opinion that such thinking is a little short-sighted. What about the Amateur’s Creed? http://kc9dnn.tripod.com/id24.html
“Progressive…with knowledge abreast of science. It is well-built and efficient. Operating practice is above reproach.” (of course, this was written in 1928. I’m not sure ‘progressive’ and ‘science’ were dirty words back then like they seem to be now.)
We should be adopting, extending, experimenting with technologies that commercial entities have had for years in addition to whatever we come up with.
Having said all of that.. I’m an avid reader of Julian’s blog and he really doesn’t seem to have any problem with a lot of technology for the most part. I take issue with your argument in this post. He’s clued me into a few things I didn’t know about before, such as the radiometrix modules and an external usb sound card interface or two for his radios.
Comment from Mark VandeWettering
Time 2/15/2011 at 9:22 pm
I am willing to concede that Julian has less of a problem with technology, but I’ll simply say the way that I got this idea is by simply reading what he wrote. Heck, the title of the article is “Is technology good for amateur radio?”. He chose the title and the subject, and I think it’s entirely reasonable to conclude after reading his article that he believes that it is not good in general.
I do read Julian’s blog because I find the technical stuff he writes to be of interest, but this isn’t exactly the first time he’s chosen to criticize the increasing use of technology in ham radio. Just in the last couple of weeks, he chose to criticize the nearly ubiquitous USB technology. He’s also claimed that things like software-defined radio are turning amateurs into appliance operators. Given that he’s actually a pretty saavy consumer of all this technology, I find the apparent contradictions to be hard to reconcile.
It’s his blog, and he can write whatever he likes. I’ll probably still read it, because so much of what he is interested in interests me. But I can’t help but think that when we promote ideas like the ones I’ve mentioned, we are simply reinforcing the idea that we are a bunch of low-tech, aging white men, trying to convince ourselves of relevance.
We won’t attract new, skilled hams by lamenting the increasing technology and the greater role that software plays in radios. We just appear foolish. If you want to criticize D-Star, it should be based upon something more tangible than it just being “new”, “different”, or “technology”. Lamenting its use of the Internet (and presumably the similar use of by Echolink and IRLP) seems oddly misplaced as well. Yes, it isn’t “free”, but neither is presumably anything else that enables your radio communications. To replace these links with purely amateur radio links simply isn’t feasible. In the choice between being able to link large numbers of radio amateurs using repeaters tied together via the Internet, or not allow them to communicate, I don’t think there is any reasonable argument against using the Internet.
Your mileage may vary.
If this stuff doesn’t float your boat, then by all means, don’t bother with it. I’m just reacting to what I read. Consider it or ignore it at your whim.
Comment from Diane VA3DB
Time 2/17/2011 at 10:20 am
Well, it’s not just the ARRL that have been guilty of over promoting EMRG, the RAC have been guilty of this as well. As far as I can tell, this is a common disease of North America.
As you well know (And I know you are probably tired of hearing me say it), I have been saying this for years. We need to push the technology, the builders, the cool stuff like WSPR for example. However, I do take exception to pushing D-star. D-star is not Amateur Radio’s future and it’s not for the often poo-pooed notion of it not being ‘open’. I will be writing on this later.
Comment from Jeff, KE9V
Time 2/15/2011 at 7:43 pm
As you have noticed and noted, Julian has no problem with technology. His equipment, use of APRS with Internet gating, WSPR with Internet data distribution, etc. proves that he has no problem with technology.
But he does frequently criticize D-STAR which seems to be at the core of most of his diatribes that are masked in the form of anti-technology rants.
My own D-STAR opinion is that the oft-repeated line about it not being “open” is mostly applesauce. Unless the person making that claim is using all open-source hardware and software then it is unsupportable hypocritical blather and nothing more.
Hams are just as free to ignore D-STAR as they are to embrace it but I find that most of the battering of D-STAR to be the same old song – “if you don’t do ham radio the way I think you should do ham radio then you are doing it wrong” and that is nothing more than an irrelevant and nonsensical argument.
73, Jeff KE9V