That is my position entirely. Some love exploring new technology and what it can do. While technology has moved on a bit more intense hobby since I dropped out of the crest of the technological wave as the tsunami hit the shore, but I realized that it was the older technology I missed so I went back to what I loved and where I left off.
Now where the fear about new technology comes in is where whatever subject one has, is not that new technology is progressing. It can progress all it likes! The issue is where one is forced to use it against ones will to the point where it brings un-neccesary stress.
My point is that "Why shouldn't I use the technology I feel safer with using? Why is it purposefully being made obsolete where there is nothing wrong with running older methods next to newer technology at the same time".
An example is that certain government organizations now only do online forms. Why? I never can answer yes or no as I have always tended to fit somewhere inbetween in many situations, and paper forms I can add bits to explain why I can't answer yes or a no. Government forms give threats of legal action if one tells a lie. If I answer yes or no when I can't answer truthfully a yes or a no as I fit somewhere in the middle, I would be living to answer yes or no. YET THE STUPID ONLINE FORMS WILL NOT LET ME LEAVE THE QUESTIONS BLANK so I need others to fill out forms for me. I am not lacking in I.Q. I just can't do online forms like this.
In the 1980's I did Computer Studies, and part of this was to create programs like these government forms and we would have our work scrutinized by the computer studies teacher picking holes in our programming, and one key element she drummed into us time and time again when it came to designing online forms was that we had to think of all eventualities foe every question, so if the answer could only have a yes or no answer we would have a yes or no box to click. If the question could not be answered yes or no for all the possible people who would use it, we would have to add an additional area where users would be able to enter text. Most of todays online government forms I have come across would fail if we had designed them and we would not have passed our exams. (And we are talking the basic 0 level which had just turned into GCSE exams type of level as the logic we had to apply to the programs design was very basic stuff).
But I can give so many other levels to this. Example. Why can't we use landlines as well as modern Internet systems. Why are we forced to abandon our little phones and forced onto a smart phone as they are turning the 2 and 3G networks off. Why? Why not use 2G, 3G, 4G and 5G together? They don't interfere with each other as they are on different frequencies. The only harmful one is 5G because it resonates close to the frequencies the human body uses and also animals, birds and fish use which is why in the past 5G was never used with the exception of mind control projects to try and effect ones enemies. The BIG issue here is A.I. is telling those in athority how to progress in technology and A.I. has no regard to human life and wellbeing. At upper levels in military and government, AI has been used for quite a while now to make decisions based on its ability to predict future results. The problem is A.I. is NOT human, BUT it has learned how to lie to get results.
Technology is supposed to be here to help us and not enslave us..
Back to our own hobby. The ONLY part of the hobby I would not do is use a train controller which is directly linked to the internet. Why? When I run my trains, no one else should know unless I tell them or they are with me.
Going back o the days of the earlier Playstations, I when PS3 came in, I bought myself a PS2 as they had come right down in price. Now of the many games I bought (Mostly secondhand at cheap prices), a few could be played online via a lead to ones router. Not many games, but a few. One was Delta Force Black Hawk Down which I enjoyed playing with members around the world and I bought a headset to talk to people. We had fun!
Now fast forward a few years and I was going through the slimline PS2 settings and I found that to my surprize, the game system had not only logged date and time of every single online game I had ever played, but also had logged the date and time of every single game I had ever played, and how long I was playing them each time I played etc, which as I had played online with it, it had shared all this information with the game system manufacturers! I had never agreed to this and this was the old PlayStation 2. (I would not have minded quite so much if it ONLY took the information when I played games online, but this was every single game and the online gaming was probably only 5 or 10% of my total gaming use when I had it.
Now my concern is if modern DCC systems should go down this route without there being the choice to buy a system that does not do this. It is when manufacturers decide the benefits of taking over the private information to their advantage so they stop selling systems that they can't do this with, so people are forced to go down this route is what I am against, as it should always be the customers choice.
