How much knowledge is enough? (was RE: [LINK] Broadband)

[Antony Barry]

On Wednesday, April 30, 2003, at 12:47 PM, Craig Sanders wrote:

> people are NOT too dumb to learn, it is NOT too hard.

This is one of the cases where "it all depends...". Back in 1963 when I 
owned an FJ Holden I had a good chance of diagnosing faults and fixing 
them. When I looked under the bonnet I could recognise the bits and the 
tools needed were simple.

These days the inside of a car and a human thorax are equally 
mysterious as far as I am concerned and i would need a workshop full of 
gear to do anything.

I used to build radios and oscillators and other circuits with discrete 
components using a soldering iron (yes they were valves). The innards 
of a radio is now a mystery to me.

Back when I has a trs-80 I did some programming in assembler and could 
figure out from the binary what was going on. These days I can write 
pidgin perl and applescript but do less and less of it as the 
applications I use cover my needs.

In each case I need, and expect, to know less and less about the inner 
workings of the tools I use as they gain capability. But then maybe I'm 
getting old...

Tony

phone : +61 2 6241 7659 | mailto:me at Tony-Barry.emu.id.au
mobile: +61 4 1242 0397 | http://tony-barry.emu.id.au