Yup, a fairly normal progression.
I went though this with "sports" cars - where only the most dedicated (or well-to-do) could own/drive one (on most days - fix on the other ones). When I was in college the lament was "Jeez - even secretaries are driving sports cars now!".
Then motorcycles. Much cheaper than sports cars (well, the bikes I was into weren't much cheaper at all) but you needed to be a fairly good "wrench" to be able to fix things alongside the road - or needed to own / have a friend with / a pickup truck and not stray too far (no cell-phones then either) The Honda 750 in '69 (well maybe '71 as the first ones had some (chainwear) problems). No more shimming isolastic suspension bushings (Norton) or flipping your sprockets over ever 1K miles (Vincent), or replacing broken spokes (all of 'em - but mostly Ducati and Velocette). Yes, BMWs were reliable, but they were indeed "rubber cows" (German nick-name for 'em) and I hadn't yet experienced Guzzis.
Now anybody (pretty much) can walk into a motorcycle dealer's and buy a bike that will go, without problems, from coast to coast and back - or buy one that'll do quarter mile times that we only dreamt of.
Speaking of cell-phones - remember mobile short wave radio? That was a hobby that seems to have pretty much disappeared - at least where there's cell-phone reception.
And GPS - my Dad had a friend with a setup in his truck so he could move his LORAN rig from his boat to his truck and navigate by lat/long (I first saw the "rig" in '62 or '63).
Not to mention flash photography. Remember flashbulbs? As a side note I have the privilege of being the person who destroyed the very first portable xenon strobe flash unit (my Dad was friends with "Doc" Edgerton who developed it - and made ground breaking high speed photos you may have seen). I was four or five at the time - and it was the size if a "two suiter" suitcase. No bad intent on my part - I fiddled with switches and buttons and it made a very bad smell.
And lasers, and oscilloscopes (remember when they were big and heavy and cost more than a car?)
IMHO, this advancement in technology is pretty much a good thing (environmental effects to the side). As it becomes more accessible the early-on hobbyists lose that sense of exclusivity - but you can then buy things better/cheaper then you could before.
And... the things you learn and (IMHO more importantly) the way you learn to think about things will stay with you. Hobbies are good - even when they get "overtaken by events".
Oh - and as a side note, I wouldn't be surprised if system-cooling-design suddenly re-emerged as a hot issue when "Longhorn" appears. If it's like other major msoft "advances" it will be much more cycle/memory hungry and will encourage app developers to do the same - so you'll need an expensive (or overclocked) PC to run the things you want...
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