What is Radio?⌗

To me…⌗

A lot of us amateurs tinker and build their own radios. With homebrewing and kits, working to understand the engineering and physics. (This was me.)

Some, probably most, get their ticket and a couple radios. The make a couple of QSOs, and their license expires.

Others, maybe most, get their tickets and it continues in a life-long growth of new equipment gear and gabbing on the nets.

I didn’t really think anything of that dynamic until recently. Radios are precursors to the computers we use today for information communication. Before computers, before cell phones, and before even the telephone there have been radios to broadcast and receive messages over the air.

Radios are the original internet. They are information technology distilled to a physics. With some simple modulation, you can send anything anywhere in the world.

I’m absolutely fascinated by information science and information technology. Seriously, I’ve been going to school for it for over 10 years. Through that lens I felt like Radio is quintessential to everything we have today, and just because it’s in the past, doesn’t mean it’s left to be abandoned. We should marry new technologies with radio in novel ways. (Consider the possibility of a radio PKI where we could log secure keys?!) The digital modes are a good start, but we can build infrastructures on this in more and more unique and efficient/capable ways.

Radio is information science incarnate. I love that.

Why is this a thing to consider?⌗

Amateur radio is in danger.

Clubs are aging out because young people need to get more involved (I don’t necessarily think this is the death knell people think it is.). This could just be affecting clubs (The only clubs I’m a member of are NARA and NAQCC). I haven’t really seen the licensing number, but ultimately clubs are dying. (I do not think this means radio is dying, but clubs are a big part for some people.)

There’s also a trend to view radios as toys, or a “Bugout” accessory to put on tacticool outfits with no real desire, or effort, to be able to do the actual public service part of radio. I like QRP, I really do, but I’m still going to take my ARES course, and put a radio in my damn truck. It’s the right thing to do.

There is also the problem of culture. In ITU 2, USA we’ve got some culture wars going on (If you’ve been on the 80 meter lately, you’ve surely heard the good manners in avoiding political talk…). This is problematic. We live in an era where the following have been politicized:

  • Science
  • Mathematics
  • Education
  • Existence
  • Cybersecurity
  • And M O R E™

If everyone could just get their heads out of their ._ … … . … the bands would be a better place.

Why should I care?⌗

You shouldn’t. This is just, like, my opinion man… Believe it or not, I have my own political beliefs. They aren’t here.

Many of them are publicly known, but they are not here. There are so few really fun hobbies left in the world. Stop trying to ruin them.

Keep your politics off the waves.

That said…⌗

We also need to make sure we’re doing our part as transmitters and custodians of data and information: We need to make sure what we say is true, and that we only claim that which we know.

There is a lot of disinformation and misinformation out there in the world. It is not my place to start to figure out who is doing what and why, but it always must not stand incorrect. Exercise forensics in the most classical sense: make your positions public, but make them well-founded for anyone can question.

If you hear something you know to be wrong, and have the sources to back that claim up, correct it. Standing for an incorrect idea to continue spreading is just as bad as (and a form of) standing by while a gross injustice is committed .

To quote Jean-Luc Picard, Captain USS Enterprise (or Ron Moore and Naran Shakar who wrote the line)

The first duty of every Starfleet officer is to the truth, whether it’s scientific truth or historical truth or personal truth! It is the guiding principle on which Starfleet is based, and if you can’t find it within yourself to stand up and tell the truth about what happened, you don’t deserve to wear that uniform.

(I’m not going to explain this here, but you should find the Star Trek page in the link bar and understand why a fictional character’s quote is important to me…)

So, make sure you do your duty to the truth. And pay attention to the order of truths there.

TL;DR⌗

I would like people to exercise Wheaton’s Law on the waves, and remember IDIC

(That means don’t be a dick, and that the core of existence is Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations.)