The key is "electronically-minded people" phrase I think. Back in the 70s-80s it meant "analog electronic minded people" so these things didn't impress them because there weren't many ways to become electronically minded back then without playing with analog electronics at some point.
Today, well... electronically minding could be programming, hardware, that could be digital of course not just analog. These seemingly basic things are just pushed behind a lot of layers of abstractions. It could be building drones, remote control sensors, machine learning, writing games, building distributed systems.
Another way to think about is when you have 1Gbps link to your house and 4GHz consumer CPUs not many people will think about analog circuits. They are just too far down in the stack. So when someone mentions those things they seem rather fascinating.
I say these things because they kind of mirror my experience. I used to take apart electronics, build radios, remote controlled toys. But, then I got computer. Started to get interested in programming. My box of analog components is still at my parents' house. I have a soldering iron but haven't touched it in 10 years now.
"...4GHz consumer CPUs not many people will think about analog circuits..."
That may be true but the same people don't think about digital circuits either. And interfaces with the real world are and remain analog. They are not digital.
Analog circuits such as you would find in a radio are quite different from the analog IO used when interfacing with the real world. Reading an analog signal from a sensor and acting upon it is trivially simple when compared to building an FM modulator that relies on feedback loops, phase offsets, non-linear junctions and so on.
I think there are a lot of people in the world right now who are interested in electronics, and have become fairly good at using digital electronics but still view analog as mysterious and magical. In that case an article like the above will be very interesting to them
I was the same until I got into embedded stuff. Started up writing a LP filter in software for something that was buggy as hell and slow and the tooling kept falling over. Changed the design for a simple RC+op amp LP and fell in love with analogue again.
Yes mine does this as well. Totally agree. They went to some insane design effort however for it to remember where it was in the mp3 stream though when you disconnect it for a few seconds to turn the ignition.
Today, well... electronically minding could be programming, hardware, that could be digital of course not just analog. These seemingly basic things are just pushed behind a lot of layers of abstractions. It could be building drones, remote control sensors, machine learning, writing games, building distributed systems.
Another way to think about is when you have 1Gbps link to your house and 4GHz consumer CPUs not many people will think about analog circuits. They are just too far down in the stack. So when someone mentions those things they seem rather fascinating.
I say these things because they kind of mirror my experience. I used to take apart electronics, build radios, remote controlled toys. But, then I got computer. Started to get interested in programming. My box of analog components is still at my parents' house. I have a soldering iron but haven't touched it in 10 years now.