How long would it take you to build an iPhone if left in a room alone with all the parts needed? I’m guessing about a million years for the average Joe, myself included. Most of us love to use all our little gadgets, yet haven’t a clue as to how they work, how to create anything electronic, or how to repair our little toys. This is not a good thing.
It’s great that we have super smart people working on great projects and inventions that make our daily lives easier. Who doesn’t love a comfortable existence? The problem is that there are too few people who are making all these great products. If these people magically vanished it would be a tough road ahead for all of us with no clue how to make those lights stay lit on our routers or how to make sound travel through a simple set of headphones.
So should all of us start taking college courses so we can raise our overall electronic IQs? Nope. All we need to do is seek a little knowledge from Kickstarter. There are many projects there that seek to enlighten individuals about the different aspects of electronics. There are simple kits available that show you how our little devices work. Here’s one example of an electronics kit here. Looking at a textbook of wiring diagrams is one of the most boring tasks I can imagine. But a kit that allows you to learn in a hands-on environment is perfect. Making a little light blink on a breadboard is not splitting the atom, but it’s quite an accomplishment for most laypeople.
The first caveman to start a fire was likely considered a wizard and many others just benefited from his discovery without caring how he did it. But if some of his buddies didn’t learn the fire creation technique, it would have died with that first caveman. Fortunately for us in the modern world others learned how to make fire, so step by step life got easier for the next few thousand years. We would be wise to learn how things work in the 2015 world so we don’t end up going backwards at some point. A lot of work has been put into all this technology and we owe it to ourselves to get more informed.
