CLOSING SUMMARY
The UK, and world electronics industry found, it had to reform into a production high volume enterprise, in order to survive; through low cost products that have become uneconomical to repair, based on the labour costs to carry out this work.
Compounding this situation is the low income from service and repairs, they no longer paid well.
The sad situation today is, that the island has less than five servicing workshops, mainly independent one man undertakings, with two, associated to their retail shop. Thus choosing a service engineering career in to-days market, would reduce you to financial distress. The islands more lucrative income is still to be found in the Finance Industry, however this too has seen considerable change over the last decade, with consequences closely akin, to the island electronic industry, although now; finance has a reality check, and pro-government policies are in-place.
Their is no going back to what the island had before, we have so carelessly discarded a sound engineering base, in favour of the fast buck route. Overall the down side is an island in 2002, without any truly technically minded or trained individuals who, inept in electronic systems, right down to a single component. The only way to resolve any technical problem is to replace a circuit panel, so long as you have observed the basic requirement, for electrostatic discharge conditions; otherwise, just plugging-in the circuit board, will send the panel to the proverbial rubbish bin.
In the worst case scenario but very common practice, is to fly in a UK engineer, who has the technical expertise to resolve a situation; this has become so prevalent, that the build-in cost of technical systems alone, has a direct relationship to the increased burden of our island economy and infrastructure. Without local electronic engineers, skilled in multi-disciplined service and repair technologies, the future of the island is destined to be inept, in its ability for self reliance in a technology based economy.
H.G.Wells the futuristic author was correct; Jersey above all other independent States has fore-filled his prophecies. Where only a small part of the cause to the symptom, it's a world-wide condition of down sizing production technologies, to a single vendor company corporate; who monopolise the digitally based technologies in the rush for computerised and multimedia interaction, between human species. With a future bereft of engineers to make these very systems work, the cost and loss is to be measured beyond the human skills base, by the corporate accountants balance book.
Future technologies, in a very short time will supersede our current glitch, with silicon computer based systems; its already in the development stages of research, and close to discarding the I.B.M. operating system, that is now historically Neanderthal.
The needs of to-day, where the boundaries of multi-media and programming software, has blurred into one signal source; the Digital Domain commands, and dominates our present lifestyle, in a way that historically, it has not done before.
I doubt that individuals working in the late1980’s, will look back on their life and consider, how technology changed their working environment, or leisure time. Even a warm and nostalgic yearn for computer technologies, would be given a second thought in comparison to the charm and delight of early radio designs, evoking the era and theme, of their time.
End 2002
The UK, and world electronics industry found, it had to reform into a production high volume enterprise, in order to survive; through low cost products that have become uneconomical to repair, based on the labour costs to carry out this work.
Compounding this situation is the low income from service and repairs, they no longer paid well.
The sad situation today is, that the island has less than five servicing workshops, mainly independent one man undertakings, with two, associated to their retail shop. Thus choosing a service engineering career in to-days market, would reduce you to financial distress. The islands more lucrative income is still to be found in the Finance Industry, however this too has seen considerable change over the last decade, with consequences closely akin, to the island electronic industry, although now; finance has a reality check, and pro-government policies are in-place.
Their is no going back to what the island had before, we have so carelessly discarded a sound engineering base, in favour of the fast buck route. Overall the down side is an island in 2002, without any truly technically minded or trained individuals who, inept in electronic systems, right down to a single component. The only way to resolve any technical problem is to replace a circuit panel, so long as you have observed the basic requirement, for electrostatic discharge conditions; otherwise, just plugging-in the circuit board, will send the panel to the proverbial rubbish bin.
In the worst case scenario but very common practice, is to fly in a UK engineer, who has the technical expertise to resolve a situation; this has become so prevalent, that the build-in cost of technical systems alone, has a direct relationship to the increased burden of our island economy and infrastructure. Without local electronic engineers, skilled in multi-disciplined service and repair technologies, the future of the island is destined to be inept, in its ability for self reliance in a technology based economy.
H.G.Wells the futuristic author was correct; Jersey above all other independent States has fore-filled his prophecies. Where only a small part of the cause to the symptom, it's a world-wide condition of down sizing production technologies, to a single vendor company corporate; who monopolise the digitally based technologies in the rush for computerised and multimedia interaction, between human species. With a future bereft of engineers to make these very systems work, the cost and loss is to be measured beyond the human skills base, by the corporate accountants balance book.
Future technologies, in a very short time will supersede our current glitch, with silicon computer based systems; its already in the development stages of research, and close to discarding the I.B.M. operating system, that is now historically Neanderthal.
The needs of to-day, where the boundaries of multi-media and programming software, has blurred into one signal source; the Digital Domain commands, and dominates our present lifestyle, in a way that historically, it has not done before.
I doubt that individuals working in the late1980’s, will look back on their life and consider, how technology changed their working environment, or leisure time. Even a warm and nostalgic yearn for computer technologies, would be given a second thought in comparison to the charm and delight of early radio designs, evoking the era and theme, of their time.
End 2002
Associated Companies in over 175 towns in Great Britain and in Barbados, Bermuda. Canada, Ceylon, Guyana,
Hong Kong, Jamaica, Malaya, Malta, Singapore, South Africa, Trinidad and West Africa etc.
Hong Kong, Jamaica, Malaya, Malta, Singapore, South Africa, Trinidad and West Africa etc.
© rediffusion.info 2012
REDIFFUSION JERSEY LIMITED
La Pouquelaye, St Helier
Jersey CI Tel. 0534 30321
Jersey CI Tel. 0534 30321
Jersey’s Radio & Television Industry 1922 - 2002 By Brian M. Lucas
