Will future generations appreciate LED light as much as we do?

tron3

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I'm not an "old man" by any means, but I am around long enough to remember a number of technology revolutions or enhancements. Some experienced first hand, some not.

Perhaps a couple of decades from now, ANY flashlight you buy will be LED based. There will be a generations of young people who may never know what it was like to have a crummy incandescent with battery life 5 to 10 times LESS than what we can have today. Not to mention the advancements in in batteries they will see.

My question is, will future generations appreciate the long battery life and white light, or just take it for granted? I suppose nearlly everyone here grew up with a TV and take it for granted - until it blows out. Won't we see flashlights in the same light?

Same goes for you cell phone. Heck, grade school kids have cell phones these days and are in constant contact with friends and family. Not to mention the new ones can take pictures, send video, watch tv, etc. Aren't we raising a generation of spoiled brats?

When I was a kid, my brother got a cheap pair of Walkie Talkies from building points on our paper route. I always wanted a pair and we were thrilled to get them. They finally broke and/or dissappeared and I always wanted a new pair. I finally got a new pair 3 years ago and yes, I do use them.

Thoughts?
 
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Manzerick

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Re: Will future generation appreciate LED light as much as we do?

i think so. I can imagine the "youngins" will never appreciate them as we do.

I'm 27 and i know there are things i take for granted that became "standard" just a few years ago.

Take car A/C.... kids today must assume all cars have it. when i was growing up not many had A/C in there house nevermind car... :O)
 

tron3

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Re: Will future generation appreciate LED light as much as we do?

Manzerick said:
i think so. I can imagine the "youngins" will never appreciate them as we do.

I'm 27 and i know there are things i take for granted that became "standard" just a few years ago.

Take car A/C.... kids today must assume all cars have it. when i was growing up not many had A/C in there house nevermind car... :O)

No a/c in the house let alone a car? I'm older than you but I always remember a/c in house and car. Though maybe not in all the homes of my friends. You must be a country bumpkin or something.
 

Manzerick

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Re: Will future generation appreciate LED light as much as we do?

Only if Boston is a bumpkin town LOL




tron3 said:
No a/c in the house let alone a car? I'm older than you but I always remember a/c in house and car. Though maybe not in all the homes of my friends. You must be a country bumpkin or something.
 

Blindasabat

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When LED's first started to appear in flashlights the advantages for some applications were clear, though I still had (still have actually) the 3D Mag for a spotlight, though I keep a 1W LED in it until I need the throw. It will still be a few years until LEDs reach that level and replace most standard flashlights. Right now I think the LED Logic Striker VG has the most throw of any LED at (6850 on FLR) where there are incans with 30k plus for far less money. A ways to go still... and the kids camping today can still see the difference between their LED and friends' incans.

My house didn't have AC until I moved out of my parents' house. My first cars had AC, it just didn't work!
 

Bozzlite

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Re: Will future generation appreciate LED light as much as we do?

tron3 said:
No a/c in the house let alone a car? I'm older than you but I always remember a/c in house and car. Though maybe not in all the homes of my friends. You must be a country bumpkin or something.

Uh, I remember no telephone in the house. Also no TV. Then we got a TV, but no antenna. Then we got an antenna and the TV broke. 4 weeks at the repair shop to get it fixed. 2 weeks at home, it quit working again. This was before the advent of transistors. It was broke more than it worked. It was a Westinghouse. We could only get 2 channels anyway at first, then ABC came along and we could get 3.

I do appreciate the electronic equipment we have now days. I have had TVs for 10 years or more that never broke down.

Just imagine the quantum leap between now and say 2 or 3 generations from now. Impossible. The high school kids have stuff now that makes the technology on the original Star Trek look antiquated.
 

Kryosphinx

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Re: Will future generation appreciate LED light as much as we do?

Bozzlite said:
...The high school kids have stuff now that makes the technology on the original Star Trek look antiquated.

WAIT!!! There's technology in Star Trek???
 

tron3

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Re: Will future generation appreciate LED light as much as we do?

Bozzlite said:
Uh, I remember no telephone in the house. Also no TV. Then we got a TV, but no antenna. Then we got an antenna and the TV broke. 4 weeks at the repair shop to get it fixed. 2 weeks at home, it quit working again. This was before the advent of transistors. It was broke more than it worked. It was a Westinghouse. We could only get 2 channels anyway at first, then ABC came along and we could get 3.

I do appreciate the electronic equipment we have now days. I have had TVs for 10 years or more that never broke down.

Just imagine the quantum leap between now and say 2 or 3 generations from now. Impossible. The high school kids have stuff now that makes the technology on the original Star Trek look antiquated.

I could be dating myself but when I was 3 and under, we lived in an apartment. I don't recall ANY tv, but maybe I was too little to remember, but I do have memories of that time. Then my father built us a house and we moved in. Shortly after that we got the first TV I can remember. A B&W Panasonic 13". Sat in the living room on a chair. There is a pic of my younger brother in front of a 20" tv..but I don't recall it. I just remember that Panasonic.

After years of growing up with B&W, it was all we knew and never complained. Few more years later, my father takes me with him to my Uncle's house. They had like a 19" or 20" TV in COLOR! Sesame Street was on and my eyes bugged out at the different colors of the muppets. It was amazing.

Some time after that, my father bought one of those entertainment system tv's. About 20" color, with 8 track (blush) radio, and turn table. We still have it though the TV no longer functions. Had it fixed a couple of times but now it is basically an antique that supports the tv sitting on top of it. I wish I could find a guy who could retro fit it and fix it up.
 
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chesterqw

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Re: Will future generation appreciate LED light as much as we do?

when i was small, there was no such thing as handphones. people use pagers and telephone or payphone to communicate with each other. nobody also uses the computers like we do now then. then before i was even born, no one though that metal object that heavy can fly:p no one though it was possible to squeeze so many things into one small handphone. no one though computers will be that useful AND interesting to use. no one though of music the size of 10 cds or more can be store in a smaller-then-palm device.
 

Macaw

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Lord only knows what another generation will bring to portable lighting. LEDs may well be history by then. Of course, there will be plenty of old LED lights around, and I would imagine some of the finer examples will be appreciated for their aesthetics rather than the output and effeciency that we have today. A Mclux III PD Ti and a Gatlight will forever be things of beauty, and the ruggedly handsome Surfires will always have their followers. Maybe future flashaholice will look at the early 21st century as the Golden Age of hand torches.
 

Brighteyez

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Re: Will future generation appreciate LED light as much as we do?

You're just bragging about your youth :)

TV broadcasts and the sale of televisions to the general public started just before WWII, though the commercial broadcasts as we know them now did not start until after WWII, and blossom in the 50's (along with frozen meals in foil trays.) The early televisions in the US were produced domestically and carried names like RCA, GE, Dumont, Philco, Zenith, Curtis-Mathis, etc. By the time that 13" Panasonic came around, it's very possible that there were no longer any televisions being made in the U.S. at all.

Insofar as that entertainment system, you could probably retrofit it all with current components I suppose.

And just to remain on topic, I wouldn't be terribly surprised if at some point in the relatively near future, incandescent flashlights will be the exception rather than the rule, as LED lights have already become a mainstream product, though Luxeon technology doesn't seem to have made a broad penetration into the mainstream market yet. (And this is how long since the Costco Luxeons were sold?)

tron3 said:
I could be dating myself but when I was 3 and under, we lived in an apartment. I don't recall ANY tv, but maybe I was too little to remember, but I do have memories of that time. Then my father built us a house and we moved in. Shortly after that we got the first TV I can remember. A B&W Panasonic 13". Sat in the living room on a chair. There is a pic of my younger brother in front of a 20" tv..but I don't recall it. I just remember that Panasonic.

After years of growing up with B&W, it was all we knew and never complained. Few more years later, my father takes me with him to my Uncle's house. They had like a 19" or 20" TV in COLOR! Sesame Street was on and my eyes bugged out at the different colors of the muppets. It was amazing.

Some time after that, my father bought one of those entertainment system tv's. About 20" color, with 8 track (blush) radio, and turn table. We still have it though the TV no longer functions. Had it fixed a couple of times but now it is basically an antique that supports the tv sitting on top of it. I wish I could find a guy who could retro fit it and fix it up.
 

ACMarina

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Re: Will future generation appreciate LED light as much as we do?

Well, we don't appreciate kerosene lanterns as much as our forefathers did, and just think how much better they were than a burning oil-soaked rag on a stick!!
 

Empath

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Re: Will future generation appreciate LED light as much as we do?

There is still a technology left to come, that will blow away nearly all lighting technologies. It will be the marriage of RF generation and light generation. Light is but higher frequency electromagnetic waves. PLL frequency synthesization will someday permit the creation of the electromagnetic spectrum of light as portable as the small radio transmitters available today. It will also permit large installations capable of extreme radiated and focused power and extreme power in smaller installations capable of propelling and sustaining momentum of a craft in space.
 

kelmo

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In answer to your question, no, whens the last time you looked at a lightbulb and said to yourself, "Tom Edison, what a guy!"

Empath, you forgot "...and to boldly go where no man has gone before!"
 

nerdgineer

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Master Yoda said: "Hard to see. Always in motion is the future..." (StW #5)

I hope they'll say, "Hah, they still used chemical energy in something called batteries for making light back then..".

I hope they won't say, "..and they used to have machines that moved by themselves, and could make light without fire... Now shut up and eat your stewed rat"...:shrug:
 

tvodrd

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I predate color television, the discrete LED, and sterio sound. :green: In the '50s my folks bought a HiFi- huge sucker that played 33 1/3, 45, and 78RPM vinyl records. I may even predate mainstream broadcast FM radio. Automotive radios had tubes and a vibrators to interrupt the car's DC into a transformer to step it up to the voltages needed by the vacuum tubes. It required a rectifier tube to convert it to high voltage DC. If you were a technoteenie, you had built your own tube tester! (Only checked filiment continuity, but that's what usually went first on them.) The advent of the "transistor radio" was soon followed by Japanese production as the labor to hand-solder the first phenolic PWBs was cheaper there.

As to future generations appreciating LED portable lighting, I suspect it will be about like the mainstream, grocery-checkout-line shopper appreciates the plastic incandescent 2D they just bought. By then, Don's and my illegitimate offspring will have brought the FFF to fruition, and the CPF'rs will be arguing the relative merits of the copies, clones, and cheap import knock-offs and whether the additional sidespill from the transparent aluminum is really a benefit or should be anodized over. :crackup:

Larry
 
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