4. Geeks are becoming more like regular folk
It goes the other way too. It’s natural for everyone whom has trouble fitting into the established norms about how a person should be like to desire fitting in. We’re all social creatures and that includes geeks.
And considering that geeks are basically problem solving machines it was only a matter of time before they could figure this one out too. They started working on aspects of themselves that they could bring more in line to mainstream acceptance without actually compromising their geeky tendencies, and some of those mainstream norms exist for good reasons.
For example, it’s true that a tendency to get carried away with a given project, which is common among geeks, sometimes gets people to drop the ball on things like eating well, exercising, grooming, making sure you’re dressed well and so on. These are the things that geeks are increasingly looking into and baking into their personalities. As a result, they end up appearing a lot more like “normal” people than they perhaps used to.
Besides that, geeks who have found success in the pursuit of their projects and gotten wealthier as a result could also afford luxuries that normal people desire too.
Photo by Phil Campbell.
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2PartsAnalog
I never thought that we would be cool. The world s changing!
Murray Snudge
Just because geeks are extremely useful does not make them cool – case not proved.
Karl
IT has such a conceit that they are THE tech and nerds. Sorry. There were tech nerds when punch cards were developed for looms. I am Technical Support for my company. The face that I am an Oracle DBA, programmer, and computer power user has nothing to do with the fact that my company makes high purity chemicals and that is what I am supporting. And it’s a whole lot easier to teach computers to a chemist than chemistry to a computer nerd.
Based on the history I know, the generation born in the late 80’s and 90’s is so isolated that, despite the “liberating” force of the internet, they are re-inventing everything around them. Comicon? There have been fan-run science fiction conventions since the ’40s, possibly earlier. Search for WorldCon. Cosplay? Those were hall costumes, part of the masquerade. Chemists and materials science nerds made the basic building blocks of that silicon you use as the foundation of your chips. Sorry, but you can’t claim the exclusive title of nerds.
SEAbeliever
The article isn’t saying that people are claiming to have started all of this. It is stating that the IT crowd has created the necessary spark to ignite the enormous popularity of the “tech and nerds”. It has all been said or done before, regardless of whether or not we are aware of it.