> Vanishingly few people know how to maintain them, and nobody wants to anymore. The irony is that a lead-acid battery, a carbon granule microphone and an el

> Vanishingly few people know how to maintain them, and nobody wants to anymore. The irony is that a lead-acid battery, a carbon granule microphone and an electromagnetic earpiece represent the simplest technology which I understood as a 7 year old - enough to build my own telephone so friends could talk from the tree house. Even the electromagnetic routers that use pulse dialling are simple enough for a kid to understand. This is now third-world tech that we can't keep up with [0]. The death of fundamental expertise permeates the western "post industrial" world now. People who know how basic stuff works and can maintain it are dying out or giving up. They're being replaced by a generation raised on smartphone apps and wishful thinking. Maybe the demise of Boeing is the template to watch for the next 10 years as more things fall apart under the gross mismanagement by a deluded corporate class. Of course those of us who dabble in things like "physics and engineering" and do stuff like "resilience and planning" are just Luddites and old men who shout at clouds, right? [0] https://cybershow.uk/episodes.php?id=25 https://cybershow.uk/episodes.php?id=25