Where are all the Hobbyists?

There is not much to do in the evenings on a sailboat once the sun goes down. I really only have 3 choices: go out, watch TV, or read. Lately I have been studying electrical engineering. While I was in school getting my degree, I took a lot of different courses and was presented with a lot of information without any context. I remember having one class on feedback systems and kept trying to get the instructor to explain a real-world application for this information. It is only since I have gotten my amateur radio (ham) license that I have seen useful applications for all the stuff I learned in school. Why couldn't one of my professors just drawn a block diagram of a radio receiver and showed us a practical application for what we were learning? My gut tells me that they didn't have a clue either.

While I was going to school, I had a good friend that had gotten his ham radio license while in the Boy Scouts. He seemed to understand all of the principles being taught every day and had the best grades in all of his classes. Now it makes sense, he had a practical application for everything he was learning. While the rest of us were just trying to get the math right, he knew where the circuit would be useful and why we were designing it that way. Getting my ham radio license when I was in the Boy Scouts really would have helped my college career.

All of this studying combined with Lance Armstrong's bad luck in the Tour de France this year has gotten me thinking about the old Radio Shack store. If you don't know, Lance rides for team Radio Shack, which is trying to shake off 20 years of declining popularity. When I was a boy, I used to go to Radio Shack and look at all of their neat electronics kits. You could buy things like resistors, diodes, and capacitors. Even though I had no clue what they did, I wanted some. I had visions of creating wonderful electronic devices in my garage, as did many other visitors to the store at that time.

Now when you walk into a Radio Shack, it is like a ghost town. I don't know how they stay in business because nobody is ever there. Sure they sell things like mobile phones, but so does every other store. I'm just waiting for Starbucks to add them to their list of goods. If you go to the back of your nearest Radio Shack, they still have individual electronic components but I never see anyone back there.

This has me asking the question: Where are all of the hobbyists? Have they disappeared or are they still out there?