The modern era

[ohio_peasant]

No single technology definitively captures the "modern era"; and even if it did, technological adaptation was uneven, and spread over years, if not decades. How many years passed between the first car with electronic fuel injection, and its essentially being mandatory on all passenger-vehicles? How many years passed before the first car with antilock brakes, and this technology becoming mandatory?

That said, I'd opine that the defining characteristic of the "modern era" is computers… computers that monitor engine-sensors and adjust air/fuel/spark, computers that modulate braking, computers that intervene to mitigate driver mistakes. That's the onboard computers. Then there are computers that calculate stresses in automotive components when the car is being designed, computers that control robots that do welding and painting, computers that monitor the factory supply-chain, computers that calculate pricing and profits and market-forecasts.

Originally Posted by SandyJet

41 years earlier in 1923 cars were basically a horseless carriage, huge jump from 1923 to 1964

This is true in general, for all mechanical things, things related to transportation, to construction, to energy. If it's not info/nano/bio, the great leaps were from the late 19th century through the mid 20th. Fundamentally, the jetliner and the nuclear reactor haven't changed since the 1960s. The skyscraper and the ocean-liner haven't changed since the 1930s.

Medicine, genetics, biology; telecom, information-processing, data storage; computers; miniaturization and automatic controls and microprocessors - this is the stuff that's evolved so enormously over the past 50 years.

As an aerospace engineer, fundamentally my work today isn't much different from what it would have been 50 or 60 years ago. The methods are very different (experimental and especially computational), but the basic problems in engineering - and their solutions - would be instantly recognizable to my grandparents.

[Vannort54]

Originally Posted by Checkered24

I know a number of people who casually work on their modern vehicles, and they do not all have huge investments in diagnostic tools or professional training.

I guess anyone who really wants to work on their vehicle will find a way to do so. Those that don't really want to are free to seek out a mechanic or garage to do it for them. However, blaming modern technology for it is really just complaining as it is not the great hinderance it is sometimes made out to be.

I guess those of us who did not grow up in the era of carbuerated big blocks do not see the computer controls and electonics as such scary hurdles to turning a wrench.

Changing the oil is one thing I bet that's about as far as they go or maybe if they really wanted to get dirty change the brakes, but first you need a special tool to push in the real caliber piston if it has rear wheel disk. I don't see many people working on there cars anymore around me. I have known some who thought they could fix there own car but made the problem worse and had to take it to a dealer to get fixed and cost more in the long run.