Shorthand today

I decided to start learning shorthand. Despite there are lots of devices to take picture of something, to record someone's speech or even to make video (all of them can be inside your smartphone), there are things that you should better make a note of. Many people don't like being recorded, sometimes you are not allowed to take pictures or maybe your device is low battery. Also you can't take pictures of things from your memory. And not many people can read shorthand, so you can make notes rather safely. Not to mention high speed of writing, which is the main purpose of shorthand. But there are situations when using recording devices are more preferable. Shorthand as any mean of notetaking has human factor. If a situation should be recorded precisely, a camera or a dictophone are more preferable.

I learn Sokolov's shorthand for Russian (more known as "ГЕСС"). It is more popular than any other system in Russia (it was a unified shorthand system in Soviet Union), thus it has more resources to learn from.

What do you think about shorthand? Do you think it is fully replaced by recording devices or it has its application nowadays? Can you write in shorthand? If you can, what system do you use?