Note that the usual "Open door" policy differs significantly from the (usually undesired) "Out the door" policy ...
As an older ham I have heard all the stuff about new modes "Killing" ham radio. I am not old enough to go back to the spark days but it seems most complaints about the new modes were all about modes that increased the ability to convey more information. AM meant more info, SSB meant info could be conveyed more successfully. RTTY, Packet, PSK, et all meant you could send and receive MORE information easily. Pretty much all innovations have been to allow more throughput. More communication. HOWEVER FT8 goes the other way. While it is contact, it conveys less information and is very restrictive in what it can convey. Other digital modes are and can be useful and can pass lots of info under poor conditions. But FT8...nada.
The ultimate goal of the hobby might be communication, but that communication does not have to be conversation. It would just seem many more value the exchange of signal reports than they do brag sheet qso and other narcissistic forms of rag chewing, like i am not dead yet or talk about myself nets. This is not to say people are not having conversations and real conversations at that, its just they are using other mediums to do it. Jump on DMR any day of the week and there is a whole lot of conversation taking place. Sure its not HF, but its kind of ham radio still and a lot more pleasant on the ears when HF conditions are poor or you live in a high noise area and it is global and allows for serious discussion to take place. My group friends and I are all using DMR now to discuss our homebrew projects and the like. 40m is not reliable, noise is getting worse in residential areas and even putting up an antenna is difficult. So we adapt and use the best tool for the job. We could have used echolink, irlp and repeater networks but then we would be tying up multiple machines for hours because that is how long we can crap on for at times, so we all have DMR hotspots on our desks and essentially our own private radio network.
I use FM, Wires-X and DMR; and you are definitely correct. Maybe it is my generation, but having grown up with computers and the internet, I find the most enjoyable part of amateur radio for me is the possibility of not needing all of that infrastructure to communicate; basically radio as a break from all of the digital connectedness. (While we were talking on a rarely used local FM repeater, a friend of mine joked that even though we were transmitting non-encrypted on open repeater, there were probably fewer people listening in on us that if we used Facebook messenger.) Here is a good illustration: One of my greatest moments of satisfaction in amateur radio came when I finally got my 2m antenna high enough that I could reach repeaters more than 100 miles away without having to use Echolink. In all seriousness, couldn't 'its all about the crazy people' be the tag for just about any AR forum? (I include myself )
