I went to our local RadioShack today and it it me. The electronic hobbyist is no more. There are a time when one could walk into a RadioShack and purchase components to build all sorts of fun electronic circuis. These days, you would be hard pressed to find anything other than a few resistors. It is all about consumer electronics. Those of us who grew up with TRS-80 and Apple ][ are the last generation to experience electronics as a hobby.

Today, it is actually easier than ever to build an electronic circuit. The software to do schematics capture and generate the circuit board is free. You can order circuit boards over the internet for $50! A few days later, you have a professional quality PC board. The components are widely available from distributors like Mouser Electronics and Digi-Key.

I believe the death knell of the electronic hobbyist was the advent of the personal computer. While computers expanded what one could do with electronic circuits (Robotics, data gathering, Lego MindStorm), the fact that you can now create something cool by simply typing is a compeling proposition.

Take your technically minded teenager. In a few minutes, he can create a program that does something! Even if it is just a simple “Hello World!” from a book, it is still a rush! Contrast that with the building of an electronic circuit. You have to have the parts, wire the things up, and after fiddling for half an hour, you have a blinking light. Meanwhile, your computer friend is on his 3rd program, poping up dialog windows. Remember, with teenagers, it’s all about instant gratification.

More than just nostalgia, there are some practical implications to this: Could we have another Woz today? How about an Earl Bakken, which literally saved lives with his garage invention? Could a pair of Hewlett and Packard be possible in today’s climate? Certainly, the garage inventors are still alive: Larry and Sergey are a prime example. But like them, they are more than likely working on a software widget. Where will tomorrows hardware come from?