devolution?

I stopped at Radio Shack today to pick up a few parts. I didn't want to stop there but, in many cases, they're the only place in town to get electronic items. It's more like a toy store with a few bins for spare parts in the back.

Never mind they didn't have any circuit boards or wire, but when I asked the kid who was waiting on me about diodes he gave me a blank stare and said, "I don't know anything about that stuff. Go to the Radio Shack by Walmart. They know all about that stuff".
Fine... This kid works in a store that sells electronics and he doesn't know what a resistor is. Who hires these people, anyway? So, I went to the Radio Shack near Walmart, where the guys are all smart about electrical stuff and asked to see an IC breadboard socket. They had two and both packages were open. No big deal. I asked if they were ok and one of the smart guys said, "I dunno". I said, then let me use your ohm meter and I'll check it out. He opened a drawer and even though it was sitting on top of everything, he started digging through it like it wasn't there. "There it is," I said. "That yellow thing." I took the instrument and set it for resistance, fired it up and the digital numbers started going through its paces like I woke it from a deep sleep. "Maybe it needs batteries" said one of the two electrically smart guys, as they stared while I checked conductivity. I'm starting to wonder just how dumb that other kid was to think these guys were so smart. When I was done I asked about diodes and the smarter of the two cheerfully guided me to the diode bin in the back of the store.
Ok, I'm a little rusty as far as electronics go and I completely forgot the resistance color code but I know when a diode has a cathode line it means something as far as polarity goes, so I asked Einstein. His reply...."I don't know anything about that stuff." Well, I figured it out by reading the back of the package and showed him how to answer another customer who might ask the same question. All I got was a slack-jawed stare and I could swear I saw neon green sub-atomic particles orbiting the genius kids head. I said, you don't know much about the stuff in this place, do ya? To which his reply was, "Not really, but I can debug and secure your network. That's what I went to school for."

Then it hit me.
Everyone knows how to push the buttons but no one knows what makes em go. Here we have a place called Radio Shack that used to be run by geeks who knew everything about electronics and then some, and now we have the very same store run by total fools who only know what they were taught in school and nothing more and none of them has ever been taught anything about electronics. Just warm bodies who aren't even interested in the nuts and bolts of the products they sell.

Ok, I'm just a regular guy trying to expand my knowledge base and reality tunnel by building a few gadgets and I can't find anyone who knows more about electronics than me and I forgot more than these guys will ever learn. And it's not just Radio Shack. It's everywhere! Go to any burger joint and talk with the jerks behind the counter. 7 out of 10 will tell you they don't like burgers and try asking for a half dozen Chicken McNuggets. They come in 4, 6, and 8. Not a half dozen.

We've become a service oriented nation and the service sucks because most people treat stupidity as if it were a virtue. You won't find any good electronic technicians because those that have the skills are working for large corporations or the government, not for themselves and certainly not for you. Ditto for all specialized jobs as well as the whole scientific community. Eventually, all specialized stores will disappear because it's not cost effective to keep in stock parts that no one buys because they don't know what to do with them, and the Radio Shacks will become just another toy store that sells the same crap you can find anywhere else, that is if they can stay in business. Try asking someone in Walmart a technical question about anything in any department. You'll just get the same vacuous look as if everyone there is working in someone else's department that day.

Example: Every town had a dozen shoe stores until Walmart came. After all the stores that measured your feet closed, Walmart decides to cut back on their shoe inventory because most styles and sizes don't sell. Now all you get are mall shoe stores that sell the same D width, regular crap that everyone else sells because there isn't a choice anymore, and the salespeople don't know anything about footwear for the same reason Radio Shack employees can't tell the difference between an LED and electrical tape.

The scientific community used to think the dinosaurs became extinct because of over-specialization. I tend to think the opposite is true of humans.