The general sentiment surrounding shortwave radio is that it is outdated; a technology that was practical before cables of glass and plastic were draped around the world, making communication instantaneous, easy, and cheap. Perhaps it's this old-tech quality which now makes shortwave radio endearing to the people (such as myself) who still use or listen to it.
Although its heyday has passed, there are still a few stations which operate on the shortwave frequencies. The variety of stations on shortwave, however, makes up for what they may lack in the departments of stereo sound, quality, or number. There's always some sort of religious group proselytizing to whomever will listen in on them, whether it's a lady who sounds like she lives alone in an old house in Maine, singing her terrible songs, or a sleazy group in South Carolina that sounds Scientology wannabes. There's other hawkers, people trying to sell things by casting out their offers on the aether, and talk shows, their words going into nothingness for all they know. The most interesting, though, are the foreign stations, the ones most afflicted by static and distortion. There's a certain charm to turning a dial on a box until suddenly, from noise, one hears a station like Radio National de Brasilia. Some languages are familiar, and phrases can be picked up with the skills from High School Spanish, French, or German - but others are completely foreign, comprised of languages whose simple identities are impossible to even guess at.
Modern communications have shrunk the world, it's undeniable - but the world is still a big place. Sometimes, it's necessary to remind one's self of this - shortwave radio can still serve this purpose well. The magic of signals, no doubt cast from far and wide, traveling across oceans and continents, interfered with by countless radio sources, and finally reaching the ear - distorted, too low or too high in pitch, but there - makes it obvious again that the world is more than what's in front of the horizon and carried by the Internet.