PROBABLY TOO LATE: Is there ‘new blood’ out there for this declining sector of the industry?

Gentlemen! I have read that you and many others say that new blood is needed. Agreed, But how do you / we talk to them?”

A powerfully relevant question and one I've pondered for some years. The fallacy I believe is in hoping that there is indeed ‘new blood’ out there. If so, then how does one identify it? Assuming that a ‘new blood’ person must by definition be a music lover is sadly out of date. New blood seems to value the messenger (MP3, etc) more than the message i.e. music.

Take for example through the ages a person interested in maths or simple arithmetic. At one point on the curve they used abacus, then perhaps logarithmic scales, then perhaps slide rules and then in 1976, the first hand-held calculators. Consider the situation of slide rule makers in the late 1960s / early 1970s having taken their art and skills to the absolute pinnacle.

  • The new blood they hoped for was about to migrate – wholesale ­– albeit progressively to the calculator.
  • They had no viable response, not because they couldn’t find one but because one did not exist.
  • Thus .... a technological checkmate!

No doubt the hapless slide rule makers considered where there was new blood and how to engage with it. All in vain.

I truly believe this is the situation facing our industry.

The point being that state-of-the-art slide rules were able to accomplish far, far more than the early calculators. However, the primary driver for calculators was not quite what they could do, rather how it was done.

Thank you

HP