Will the smartphone kill caving?
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2xw
Active member
A correlation in that graph sure, but is it causation?
Or is it because nowadays people can cave much longer, into their eighties etc. The average age of our student club rises every year because alumni stick around, yet, we still pull in students year on year and that has not shown any sign of slowing down or stopping.
In the UK it might be a different story and I'd be interested in any BCA data. I'd also be especially interested in the effects of stuff like foot and mouth.
I don't think the smartphone will kill caving - I take mine underground
Or is it because nowadays people can cave much longer, into their eighties etc. The average age of our student club rises every year because alumni stick around, yet, we still pull in students year on year and that has not shown any sign of slowing down or stopping.
In the UK it might be a different story and I'd be interested in any BCA data. I'd also be especially interested in the effects of stuff like foot and mouth.
I don't think the smartphone will kill caving - I take mine underground
Duncan S
New member
Ah... Statistics...
Here's a classic example
The lack of Pirates has caused Global Warming
http://www.fico.com/en/blogs/analytics-optimization/beware-pirates-big-data/
She may have a good point though
Here's a classic example
The lack of Pirates has caused Global Warming
http://www.fico.com/en/blogs/analytics-optimization/beware-pirates-big-data/
She may have a good point though
rhychydwr1
Active member
Short answer YES! It has also kill book sales. This has been taken over by e-books and google. As I write this, a paper manufacture in Watchet has gone bust. People are not buying books anymore.
A_Northerner
Active member
rhychydwr1 said:
This is beside the point of the thread but a paper manufacturer going bust does not necessarily mean that people aren't reading books. There are numerous economical reasons that could explain it. Regardless of this, the Ebook market is booming and I, for one, encourage people to read by any means possible; if Ebooks encourage a younger generation of readers to access any literature they desire at the press of a button that surely cannot be a bad thing?
As for the smartphone killing caving I think that is an enormous conclusion to jump to from the ideas presented in that Talk. As someone, like 2xw, who is on the front lines of the introduction of the younger generation into caving I can tell you that the mass spread of information that is present in the modern era has only piqued the interest of young people - we have 18-year-olds who join the club that already know about classic trips, and we regularly accept members who are keen to get trained in SRT so they can be competent enough to visit Titan (pending entrance shaft repairs). I'm almost certain that this level of intrigue is down to the fact that they have seen/heard about caving through the internet, aided by their smartphones.
As smart phones make it easier for your boss to get hold of you outside of office hours and for you to then actually work the professional cost of being properly out of touch, ie in a cave, will get higher. It?ll also become more beautifully valuable.
Conversely being able to work remotely also makes it easier to negotiate time off work for other things.
I also think young teenagers as so busy exploring being alive it?s not that surprising they don?t unplug for family holidays to Italy. I didn?t at that age
To me it looks like there are lots of pre and post childbearing cavers and far fewer active cavers with young children. Obviously not everyone has kids, but I think enough do to impact the age spread of the sport.
If technology ever fulfils its promise of allowing us shorter working hours I reckon caving will become more manageable for people on a kid raising break, but that is more a question for how we organise society rather than a question of smart phones.
TLR no
Conversely being able to work remotely also makes it easier to negotiate time off work for other things.
I also think young teenagers as so busy exploring being alive it?s not that surprising they don?t unplug for family holidays to Italy. I didn?t at that age
To me it looks like there are lots of pre and post childbearing cavers and far fewer active cavers with young children. Obviously not everyone has kids, but I think enough do to impact the age spread of the sport.
If technology ever fulfils its promise of allowing us shorter working hours I reckon caving will become more manageable for people on a kid raising break, but that is more a question for how we organise society rather than a question of smart phones.
TL
R noI assume The original post was linking to Hazel Bartons Ted talk. Sent she gave it from an American perspective I'll give my American perspective from the Huntsville area - one of the richest caving regions in the entire United States and one of the largest cave clubs. I'm not sure if a smart phone is killing desire to cave as much is just the lack of desire to explore that I'm seeing at least here in the United States. Take the caving club I am in for example. We regularly host a horizontal and vertical trip there's one of each every month and that's it they are both tourist trips just general introductory sort of things. Despite having over 4000 almost 5000 caves in Alabama and 15,000 in the region it's usually the same few caves that get put on the list time after time again, and the same couple people who go. We do get new people maybe one or two every other month but none of them really stick with it Probably we can get about two or three new people to caving every year but people drop out as well. The funny thing is the position that organizes these trips is called the projects chair. But yet try to get anybody who wants to Ridgewalk today to survey to push a cave with? On the map at 7 foot ceilings just because somebody abandoned it because there's a little bit of water and back in the day they didn't really want to get wet as much as we do now or the whole section left off the map because you had to crawl in a bit of water for a couple hundred feet but then it pops and a huge borehole again. The cavers who do that stuff are the cavers who are not in organized Caving and this is something I have learned over the last two years. From the beginning I wanted to learn to survey I wanted to discover new caves and new passages in existing caves. I started to teach myself about two years ago and recently finished a resurvey project that put in over a mile long because we added a couple hundred feet of virign passage plus a whole quarter mile upper level that was ignored in the original survey and most people don't know exist.
I ran for the projects chair position for 2016 and I lost. I ran on the platform of keeping a tourist trip once a month and the other organize trip would be an actual projects and as beginners came by we would make sure they got a beginner appropriate trip for them at a time that they could attend. I lost to a crowd of people who wanted it to stay status quo one horizontal trip and one vertical trip every month and that's it. To me that explains why Caving is dying. At least the world of organized Caving. The people like me who wants actually explore new worlds and not just see the same old cave time after time - we leave the organize world. we go there for different functions or when there's a good trip to a cave that might be hard to access otherwise, but other than that we are lone wolves doing our own thing organizing trips amongst ourselves to go survey that you cave or go check out that ridge that really should have some entrances but doesn't. The people who join the grottoes here who don't understand that the underworld of cavers exists but want that exploration just leave. Caving gets boring when you do the same 20 trips for a couple of year.
So yes I see caving dying here slowly. But not because of smart phones, because lack of retention of interest. when you have to search out your own connections to cavers abroad and in other states to even learn how to survey a lot of people arnt going to take that time or go up against those barriers. I had to learn all this stuff from you all, and from some project cavers in Missouri.
Anyway I hear a rumor that they're going to make me in charge of explorations. The problem with that but I see happening is that I'm not gonna get the support and weight of the grotto behind me so it'll be anybody who wants to do actual project caving go with Amy and she'll pay for all the equipment and all the supplies and do all the training on her own. I hope that is not the case because I can't afford that. I don't have the gear to outfit multiple survey crews, we are even still hands drilling all of our bolts that we need. Our grotto has about $4000 in the bank, will use a couple hundred every year supporting various conservancies but we really don't do much and we could afford to do a whole lot more, and that's sad. Last I asked I was told the grotto didn't have money for survey gear or for a drill. I know that isnt true. People just dont want to have it.
The funny thing is I have the support of the old-timers the actual Old timers. They speak of the glory days of the grotto when they were finding new caves every weekend and surveying extensively and doing a lot of scientific studies as well (geology, hydrology).
Now to be fair caves aren't as ripe for the picking as they were back in the 60s but still a little bit of preplanning for a ridgewalk and you can find plenty of holes blowing air to dig and some new caves just from the get-go. I mean we just found a huge one in Huntsville city limits that everybody is over look for decades but it's so obvious! Honestly just from rig walks in the last year I have more dig project than I can handle in my lifetime most likely unless I somehow can cave every single day. So it is still out there. People just dont care to look.
It isn't all sad of course there are plenty of us still looking for new caves and exploring new passages and surveying and digging. You're just less likely to find those people in an organized Caving world.
People say sometimes that I Belittle our caving club and i shoulsnt say word bad. I dont mean to I just state what The current desires of the club is, as proven time and time again by the politics and the votes of the members. I don't know how close the vote was I know I got a lot of people telling me that they wished I wouldve won. I want to do what I can to help people explore I had to teach myself from the Internet and from friends abroad and while it was very nice of everybody and also kind of sucks. If I can somehow be the local person to help people learn the stuff here well then that would be awesome. I'm willing to share what little knowledge I have of the people who want to learn I just wish that I was given a chance to do that. So until then the organist Caving world really isn't for me at least here.
I ran for the projects chair position for 2016 and I lost. I ran on the platform of keeping a tourist trip once a month and the other organize trip would be an actual projects and as beginners came by we would make sure they got a beginner appropriate trip for them at a time that they could attend. I lost to a crowd of people who wanted it to stay status quo one horizontal trip and one vertical trip every month and that's it. To me that explains why Caving is dying. At least the world of organized Caving. The people like me who wants actually explore new worlds and not just see the same old cave time after time - we leave the organize world. we go there for different functions or when there's a good trip to a cave that might be hard to access otherwise, but other than that we are lone wolves doing our own thing organizing trips amongst ourselves to go survey that you cave or go check out that ridge that really should have some entrances but doesn't. The people who join the grottoes here who don't understand that the underworld of cavers exists but want that exploration just leave. Caving gets boring when you do the same 20 trips for a couple of year.
So yes I see caving dying here slowly. But not because of smart phones, because lack of retention of interest. when you have to search out your own connections to cavers abroad and in other states to even learn how to survey a lot of people arnt going to take that time or go up against those barriers. I had to learn all this stuff from you all, and from some project cavers in Missouri.
Anyway I hear a rumor that they're going to make me in charge of explorations. The problem with that but I see happening is that I'm not gonna get the support and weight of the grotto behind me so it'll be anybody who wants to do actual project caving go with Amy and she'll pay for all the equipment and all the supplies and do all the training on her own. I hope that is not the case because I can't afford that. I don't have the gear to outfit multiple survey crews, we are even still hands drilling all of our bolts that we need. Our grotto has about $4000 in the bank, will use a couple hundred every year supporting various conservancies but we really don't do much and we could afford to do a whole lot more, and that's sad. Last I asked I was told the grotto didn't have money for survey gear or for a drill. I know that isnt true. People just dont want to have it.
The funny thing is I have the support of the old-timers the actual Old timers. They speak of the glory days of the grotto when they were finding new caves every weekend and surveying extensively and doing a lot of scientific studies as well (geology, hydrology).
Now to be fair caves aren't as ripe for the picking as they were back in the 60s but still a little bit of preplanning for a ridgewalk and you can find plenty of holes blowing air to dig and some new caves just from the get-go. I mean we just found a huge one in Huntsville city limits that everybody is over look for decades but it's so obvious! Honestly just from rig walks in the last year I have more dig project than I can handle in my lifetime most likely unless I somehow can cave every single day. So it is still out there. People just dont care to look.
It isn't all sad of course there are plenty of us still looking for new caves and exploring new passages and surveying and digging. You're just less likely to find those people in an organized Caving world.
People say sometimes that I Belittle our caving club and i shoulsnt say word bad. I dont mean to I just state what The current desires of the club is, as proven time and time again by the politics and the votes of the members. I don't know how close the vote was I know I got a lot of people telling me that they wished I wouldve won. I want to do what I can to help people explore I had to teach myself from the Internet and from friends abroad and while it was very nice of everybody and also kind of sucks. If I can somehow be the local person to help people learn the stuff here well then that would be awesome. I'm willing to share what little knowledge I have of the people who want to learn I just wish that I was given a chance to do that. So until then the organist Caving world really isn't for me at least here.
Kenilworth
New member
Some problems with Barton's speech:
The example of Christopher Columbus does nothing to explain the value of "exploration for exploration's sake", which she is supposedly trying to promote. Return on investment and exploration aren't related because exploration is not an investment at all. If it were, it would be a foolish one since, as Barton says, 99 of 100 are, materially, failures.
The correlation of millionaire businessmen with gaudy "exploratory" activity may well be due to opportunity rather than any "inherent inquisitiveness" of "successful" people. Barton hints at this, but still tries to force an uninteresting and poorly founded conclusion.
Smartphones are not "a barrier between us and our ability to explore our world." The removal of ourselves from the natural world has been ongoing since long before cellphones were a thing. This exodus has left people helplessly ignorant; they view nature as alien and dangerous and toilsome and have come to believe that they have evolved beyond any need for it. The loss of domesticity and the modern disdain for manual labor mean that modern youths have little patience for or tolerance of the physical drudgery and pain that drive exploration. The loss of awareness of their place in the world means that they are in no position to appreciate the personal and spiritual benefits of exploration.
One good point:
The value of non-scientist explorers to science. Thousands of unlearned cavers recognize patterns and incongruities and do much of the field-work that forms the basis for specialized scientific learning.
The numbers and ages of caving club members, which Barton and A_Northerner and 2xw have mentioned, say little about the state of exploration. As Amy has indirectly rambled, caving does not equal exploration. Much caving by the old is, often necessarily, recreational and social, while many young cavers are little more than shallow glory-hounds.
The example of Christopher Columbus does nothing to explain the value of "exploration for exploration's sake", which she is supposedly trying to promote. Return on investment and exploration aren't related because exploration is not an investment at all. If it were, it would be a foolish one since, as Barton says, 99 of 100 are, materially, failures.
The correlation of millionaire businessmen with gaudy "exploratory" activity may well be due to opportunity rather than any "inherent inquisitiveness" of "successful" people. Barton hints at this, but still tries to force an uninteresting and poorly founded conclusion.
Smartphones are not "a barrier between us and our ability to explore our world." The removal of ourselves from the natural world has been ongoing since long before cellphones were a thing. This exodus has left people helplessly ignorant; they view nature as alien and dangerous and toilsome and have come to believe that they have evolved beyond any need for it. The loss of domesticity and the modern disdain for manual labor mean that modern youths have little patience for or tolerance of the physical drudgery and pain that drive exploration. The loss of awareness of their place in the world means that they are in no position to appreciate the personal and spiritual benefits of exploration.
One good point:
The value of non-scientist explorers to science. Thousands of unlearned cavers recognize patterns and incongruities and do much of the field-work that forms the basis for specialized scientific learning.
The numbers and ages of caving club members, which Barton and A_Northerner and 2xw have mentioned, say little about the state of exploration. As Amy has indirectly rambled, caving does not equal exploration. Much caving by the old is, often necessarily, recreational and social, while many young cavers are little more than shallow glory-hounds.
Alex
Well-known member
Maybe the smartphone is killing caving in an in-direct way. The materials used to produce the smartphone intially and then constant upgrades people seem to buy, not to mention the electrical charge they require all make them very un-environmentally friendly and increases each of our carbon foot prints one way or another. One consequence of global warming brought on by these increased carbon emissions is more rainfall and that rainfall makes most caves impassable meaning I have not caved in the Dales for the last month. So due to global warming partially created from smartphone manufacture and power consumption I can say yes it is killing caving or at least contributing to it.
Still at least I can see what the rest of my bored mates are up to on it and arrange trips down mines instead, which I presume is seeing an increase in numbers. But mines are bloody dangerous!
Note: This post is slightly tongue and cheek, but is a new perspective.
Still at least I can see what the rest of my bored mates are up to on it and arrange trips down mines instead, which I presume is seeing an increase in numbers. But mines are bloody dangerous!
Note: This post is slightly tongue and cheek, but is a new perspective.
Disgusted from Cornwall.
New member
At some point humans will either be extinct, or will have evolved into something else. The emergence of nasty untreatables will probably see off most of the population at some point, if that doesn't, the end of cheap energy will. This is all much more important than a load of teat-sucking-scientists with their rather unscientific settled-science and their plant food gas hysteria.
At some point, there may be some other organism poking around caves.....probably descended from seagulls.
At some point, there may be some other organism poking around caves.....probably descended from seagulls.
Peter Burgess
New member
Quite a few already living in West Penwith, I hear.Disgusted from Cornwall. said:
