My speculation is that being surrounded by ubiquitous wireless technologies, some people are going to be curious about the nuts and bolts of it all and want to

My speculation is that being surrounded by ubiquitous wireless technologies, some people are going to be curious about the nuts and bolts of it all and want to understand how it works. A second factor is that things like RTL-SDR that allow exploring interesting signals for about the cost of two decent burritos makes it very low friction to get started. I hope the interest continues to grow.