The Rise and Fall of the Geek 358
chilled writes "Tom Steinberg has posted this guest editorial on The Register bemoaning the decline of the Geek. He suggests that geeks in their alignment against for example RIP and Microsoft are losing their voice. I think he's right but the emergence of a common set of goals should be recognised as a very good thing. The geeks amongst us should use this commonality to rise up and use our voice for progress and not petty squabbling."
Is it bad (Score:2, Interesting)
There are still plenty of issues to fight and flame and be different over, but there are now some points that we all share together. It makes us a closer knit community and will hold us together
No more petty squabbling? (Score:2, Interesting)
evolution (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:A Counter Opinion (Score:1, Interesting)
Geeks aren't Marketeers, so we aren't listened to. (Score:2, Interesting)
By pointing out a limitation or flaw the ones who understand the most are deemed "too negative" by managers and marketeers.
If you are too negative, too often, you will be pigeon-holed as a nay-sayer; even if you turn out to be right.
Geeks aren't marketeers so we lack the euphemisms to use when speaking to marketeers. Instead of saying: "Technology doesn't permit." or "This system is inadequate" the words escape us to reword this into something that can be spun positively.
In essence: Geeks are excluded because we know too much.
This response probably pretty extreme, but it sure feels true.
Quite a bit of the time I find myself not having the necessary time to get buy in to certain designs and architectures. It takes longer to get buy in, than to just implement the architecture.
I dare any one of you to attempt to explain the following paragraph to a marketeer / managerial type who is still struggling with how to buy a book from Amazon:
I haven't found a manager friendly way to say that yet. Any suggestions?
Geek have one politics for one reason (Score:4, Interesting)
Unlike other groups, geeks (i still
hate the term) are defined by
intellegance, reason, and the scientific method.
While other groups will always contain members
that will hold mad, bad and obviously wrong
beliefs not matter what, a geek will always
change beliefs based on evidence and a solid
reasoned argument based on axioms they share.
If most geeks are in argeement in belief of something its probably because its (if
not true) at least as close to true as we can
get in the limit current knowledge.
They call them geeks (Score:2, Interesting)
Bullshit (Score:2, Interesting)
There's a significant difference between fighting for a cause and standing up for what's right, and attempting to force your beliefs on other people. We bemoan the strong-arm tactics employed by big business but we turn around and essentially declare "you're either eith us or against us". Not true? You haven't been reading Slashdot the past four years. We've been clapping in delight every time the house of one of our enemies collapses but we've been ignoring the termites gnawing away at our own basement.
Simply stopping internal squabbling is not going to do it either. How can we expect to 'dominate the world' when Eugenia Loli has trouble configuring the premier commercial Linux distro? When the most visible end-user Linux company (Lindows) does nothing but stumble in their tracks every time they come up with a new strategy for stealing market share from Microsoft?
No, what we need is more attention to the realities of the world. Stallman-esque idealism is nice but has gotten us exactly nothing. Radicalism is obviously not working, either. Let the technology stand on its own, and let it cater to the same type of people we attack and disparage for using 'an inferior OS', as if that was somehow indicative of terrible genetic deficiencies.
We can either break out of this vicious cycle or continue to wallow in our own little pool of muck while we shake our fists at the nice rich beautiful people that walk by.
Geeks Squabble By Nature (Score:2, Interesting)
Geeks are either afraid to admit any kind of ignorance to any subject, especially technical, or very quick to abmonish someone for asking a question and (how dare he/she) admit ignorance.
This fear of showing any sign of weakness, as well as the know-it-all attitude, makes it difficult for open discussion and compromise to occur on even trivial issues, thus squabbling is rampant. This is the same in other realms as well of course, but it is an aspect to the geek regime.
I'm not saying I'm not part of this -- I am a geek as well -- it's just one of our weaknesses.
I am a geek....and I am conservative...... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:evolution (Score:4, Interesting)
The Tron Metaphor (Score:2, Interesting)
There's Alans and there's Flynns.
The Alans of the world go to a nice, salaried job and have a professional background in Windows APIs, C#,
Then there's the Flynns, the guys deeply devoted to the Gnustic mysteries. These guys have good weed, a prodigious mp3 collection, and know every nook and cranny of their
Many of us fall somewhere on this spectrum. But the future of the system depends on how they work together to fight Dillinger and the MCP. Some Alans will join the dark side. But not all by a long shot, because the limitations imposed on systems by things like the DMCA or (god forbid) palladium run counter to the needs of the Users. And we all believe in the Users, don't we?
Re:The larger problem is the new crowd. (Score:4, Interesting)
> High school kids coming out with MCSE's, places
> you can get a CCNA quick, or A+ certification
> that just seems like a joke to any old-school
> type. These people are the "new geek chic" and
> they're anything but.
After having RTFA, the Standard editorial giving rise to this item on
"Geeks are now a special interest lobbying group, whereas before they were a cultural phenomenon."
To me, this accounts for the coalescing of what had been a cultural phenomenon around a sort of common themes and political aspirations. There is an established culture. It is primarily anti-capitalist in economics and pro-libertarian vis-a-vis individual rights.
Summarizing the geek culture in general terms of course does not sweep every individual into lockstep with those ideas, but the broad cultural trends are undeniably there. We all know which way the wind blows on
As far as the geek chic thing goes, I don't see it as a cultural phenomenon. People look for opportunity and "e" anything seemed like the land of milk and honey for a while. That is going through a natural (and welcome) correction right now through typical economic feedback loops. Hopefully, the wheat will be separated from the chaff. Unfortunately, there are lots of human and political costs that result from the upheaval of a boom/bust cycle like we just had. Sorry if you got laid off, but many IT jobs just shouldn't have existed in the last several years.
The prior poster bemoans certifications as diluting the geek culture that predated and gave rise to what he/she/it termed "geek chic." Let me Cliff Claven that for a minute, too:
Certification is useful as a specialized population of knowledge workers grows -- personal contact no longer serves to differentiate dedication to a craft. Certification provides a rough proxy to the dedication aspect (i.e. "I am willing to spend beaucoup bucks on cram courses and tests") but it does not dictate that one with a certification is qualified for pouring piss out of boots.
In many respects, even a four year college education falls into this category -- you need to have it, but it doesn't mean you can do anything after you get it. It is a exclusionary qualification -- if you don't have it, you're fucked. If you do have it, you have doors opened.
In a general reply to your post, I think your underlying assumption is wrong: geek chic never existed. It was all about the money and trying to avoid looking like a poseur. On the bright side, the reversal of IT's economic fortunes may slow some of the changes you bemoan. Unfortunately, I don't see that genie ever going back into the bottle.
As for myself, when I stopped seeing fat guys with beards, suspenders, and flannel shirts at trade shows, I knew the sharks were in the water and something more pure and carefree had been lost. I'll miss it.
guac-foo.
Wow! (Score:3, Interesting)
Imagine if DRM existing in the 1960s, or even the 1980s - the Internet would not exist. People would never have been able to build the little pieces needed to form the net (Almost every protocol was originally just a "hack". DNS was a shortcut so you didn't have to remember IPs, telnet was a shortcut so you could control a machine remotely, the web browser was a shortcut to locating information anywhere.)
That's why there's no differing in arguing against this. We don't exist without it. It'd be like having different opinions about whether we should allow oxygen in our atmosphere. "Well gee, maybe if they give us a bunch of money, we can give in on that oxygen requirement."
DRM turns us all into slaves.
Re:A Counter Opinion (Score:4, Interesting)
I think this is the same with other issues. When it comes to disliking Microsoft, in my opinion, there is no middle ground here either. I'll explain why.
Geeks, by my definition and that of the parent poster, are about doing what they want to with their own equipment. We like to play with technical gear in a fashion that suits us. This is why I agree that DRM is bad.
Microsoft, to a lesser extent than DRM (for now?), has generally proven themselves to want to control your system, as opposed to an OS like Linux or *BSD. From EULA swapping, silently re-enabling auto-update, forcing IE to visit microsoft.com and report an id number (from what I'm told of early versions of 98), and restrictions on what you can and cannot do with their products, I think it's obvious. This is not as clean-cut of an argument as that of geeks vs. DRM, but I think it makes sense.
In my experience, there are no technically-literate arguments for Microsoft (in its entirety) simply because to anyone who knows their history, what they've attempted to do and what they have done, it seems obvious that it's impossible to find Microsoft innocent.
I would love any response to this so long as it isn't a troll. Respect my view, and prove me wrong by logic, or agree with me and state why.
It's not drivel j/b you don't understand. (Score:2, Interesting)
Here we go again, another /.'er who has no understanding of the complexity of capitalism as a system saying that the bad parts of capitalism aren't capitalism at all. Sort of like 1980's-era Soviet sympathizers complaining that the economic woes of the USSR was not a product of either socialism or communism.
Wake up. Capitalism is global at this point, and the way in which it hooks up to the legal system, the loopholes and exceptions to the "free" market are the direct product of capitalism.
It's not ideal, but it is exactly capitalism.
Where the hell else do you think Microsoft is headquarted? On Mars?
And spammers? They spam because of the globalization of capital, regardless of the economic organization of their country of origin.
I don't think all problems are the side-effect of capitalism, but these two most definitely are.