That's what they said before Katrina, Wilma, Andrew, etc etc.
People have been predicting the demise of HAM for a long time and they've been wrong every time.
L
Yes and no. Look at MARS in Vietnam compared to today’s text messaging, Sat phones, real-time blogging from Iraq, HH digital cameras and uploads, and instant communications. Technology is growing exponentially. (Not linear)
50 years?
HAM will be dead, VOIP will be dead, broadband as we know it will be dead, libraries (IMHO) will be dead, tiny screens on phones will be dead, possibly even the phone as we know it will be dead, etc.
Today, radio is headed into the digital realm. Most amateur rigs are still either voice analog and/or some very slow digital. How are you going to compete with a Cell Phones (that give unlimited Long D calling free and costs less than 50 bucks), satellite radio, satellite TV, text messaging, the Internet, palmtop computers, VR, GRMS, - I could go on and on. And that is current tech right now in 2007.
I see more and more of this:
http://www.lcara.org/Hamfest/Hamfest06.html
High speed digital is still in its infancy and has already eclipsed analog. Face it the Days of "CQ, CQ, CQ" are over. Think you can get enough kids these days to learn Morse? There are more text messages sent everyday (40 billion in the UK alone last year) than there are people on planet Earth.
This is only the beginning. Satellites in orbit and tiny H/H digital radios will preclude the used of HAMS during a crisis such as Katrina. Hardened fiber and generator backups of critical nodes will also keep broadband alive. Do you remember the guy who blogged on the Internet from a secure location during the entire Katrina event?
This is only the beginning. (Just an additional tidbit: who would have thought CRTs would be effectively dead by 2010?)
Welcome to the new exponential world.