The other day I got a press release about disaster preparedness for grade school kids.
It made mention of teaching kids how to use a battery powered radio to get information. And it suddenly struck me that my 8 year old nephew likely has never even SEEN an FM radio, much less would know how to tune one to a specific station.
I’m in my 30s and really never actually used an old radio like that. Like there were some laying around that nobody used anymore and I kind of played with them as a kid, but I’m right on the cusp of not knowing how to use one.
25 soon to be 26, my family liked to camp out in the Mojave when I was a kid so I do know how to use them but even for me I am far more familiar with stereos .
WiFi is of course radio. We just tune in and listen to it differently.
If you limited your bandwidth to 20 or 30 kHz, you could build a “radio” that you manually tune to a WiFi channel frequency and that produces audible noise. You could then build a 1980’s style modem to convert the audio back into a bitstream that you could run your network connection over.
It would be about many times slower than standard Wifi though modern compression could speed that up a bit.
The other day I got a press release about disaster preparedness for grade school kids.
It made mention of teaching kids how to use a battery powered radio to get information. And it suddenly struck me that my 8 year old nephew likely has never even SEEN an FM radio, much less would know how to tune one to a specific station.
Shit like that makes me feel reaaaaaaallllly old…
My elderly father was confused when he bought an old style fm radio and found out it was only a Bluetooth speaker.
I’m in my 30s and really never actually used an old radio like that. Like there were some laying around that nobody used anymore and I kind of played with them as a kid, but I’m right on the cusp of not knowing how to use one.
25 soon to be 26, my family liked to camp out in the Mojave when I was a kid so I do know how to use them but even for me I am far more familiar with stereos .
The two aren’t mutually exclusive. Most stereos had tuners.
I still know the kind you tune with a slider on a coil. Same age.
This. I have one right here on my bedroom
Tell em it’s analog wi-fi
WiFi is of course radio. We just tune in and listen to it differently.
If you limited your bandwidth to 20 or 30 kHz, you could build a “radio” that you manually tune to a WiFi channel frequency and that produces audible noise. You could then build a 1980’s style modem to convert the audio back into a bitstream that you could run your network connection over.
It would be about many times slower than standard Wifi though modern compression could speed that up a bit.
You probably still have an FM radio in your car. You just use it so infrequently that your forget it is there.