Imho
IMHO, from somebody who works in an extremely fast moving tech industry, the thing that surprises me about PPL & Aviation is how resistant to change it is. The cultural resistance permeates everything from the WW2 based PPL syllabus, to the generally aging PPL population to the club houses that are usually adorned with images of their long illustrious history. For example you are far more likely to see a model spitfire in the club house rather than, Virgin Galactic 1 for example. Most of us fly aircraft 30 or 40 years old.
GPS isn't taught on the PPL, everything is done using the whizz wheel (not even an electronic calculator). Flight plans are still transmitted in an archaic language.
I know you can argue back and forth about how, well what if the batteries run out of your calculator? How will you calculate your magnetic bearing then? Or what happens if your GPS packs up? How will you navigate then?
Personally I can't help but believe that a much more modern approach to aviation would be beneficial. With SkyDemon you can snap the points you want, generate your plog, put into your GPS and be out of the club house in about 5 mins flat. It makes flying more fun, it makes passengers more interested in going flying if they're not spending time waiting around for you to calculate the drift, on a whizz wheel, at 2000ft @ 100kts. I wonder if aviation would have less attrition?
Imagine if ALL airfields had ILS, if everybody was required to complete at least the IMCr before graduating? If all the IMC planning was done by computer? I think flying would be far more fun and rewarding.
I also think you'd get fewer infringements, fewer people missing NOTAMs. If you clicked your route, everything was presented plainly and easily for you then you remove one less component to go wrong. At the very least the NOTAM co-ordinates could be plotted onto Google maps and presented to you rather than having to decipher them yourself, with possible errors.
Either way, in my view, from my limited position at the bottom of the aviation PPL world, the culture is historical, nostalgic looking. Resistance to change is everywhere and for the time being the status Quo look like they'll get their way.
Maybe it's just the world we are? We have to accommodate all edge cases, i.e. a mud hut morse code transmission, and so aviation can't move on. The thing is, it's surprising giving the massive leaps forward in the aerospace industry, where innovation and progress rule.
Hence things like archaic NOTAMs, AIS websites that are a shining example in how to make unusable user interfaces are here to stay. There again, that's what makes us cool. We understand all of this stuff that mere mortals can only dream about understanding! Like what do those funny coloured lights mean on the apron?