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Old fashioned, well sorta. Obsolete, never. There have been times, and will be again, where a simple analog two way contact is the only thing that will work. As recently as 10 years ago we had a couple towns in Oregon completely isolated with all roads, power lines, and phone lines washed out from floods & landslides, and Ham stations across the river from one another carried all communication in & out of those towns for a number of days.

Truth be told I don't get on the air as much anymore as I probably should because it doesn't deliver the volume of information (and certainly not the convenience) to which I have become accustomed, but I do keep the gear somewhat ready because of it's versatility and superb reliability. And there are still areas I go to on a regular basis that are within 15 miles of I-5 right here in the middle of Lane County where there is not and has never been cel phone coverage, and people live and work and play in those areas every day. My 2M & 440 HTs are always in my rig wherever I go and the HF gear is portable enough that I can toss it in the rig in a minute along with a box of stuff that can be used to build antennas.

My interest in discussion forums such as this one developed through Ham radio, where I operated a board of my own over packet radio for quite a long time. It was almost like a little Free Republic in my radio shack, and we discussed politics and other issues with folks all over the world. We were relaying messages through bulletin boards linked to one another by packet radio back in 1986, and my neighbor had a bulletin board he ran on his Apple II over HF RTTY back in 1980. And that stuff worked without a single phone line, and in a lot of cases without AC power.