Yesterday night I was surfing through the idiotbox to see if there
were any good cartoons playing when I came across the series Recess
playing on Disney channel (or it might have been Nickeledon).
In the part that I saw,one of tha characters, Vince (an athlete) had
come to realize that his brother whom he had always thought to be a
cool , was actually a geek. Vince was devastated by this discovery and
was sharing his anguish with his friends. He thought it was only a
matter of time till genetics kicked in and he too would transform into
a geek.
I am not sure how old the serial was, my rough estimate is 4-5 years
old. It made me realize how at one time geek was a derogatory term.
However being a geek is an fashionable thing now. People whose only
claim-to-geekdom is that they have a Moveable Type blog (updated
hourly) proudly proclaim to be a geek.
Just take those old records off the shelf
I'll sit and listen to 'em by myself
Today's music aln 't got the same soul
I like that old time rock 'n' roll
Don't try to take me to a disco
You'll never even get me out on the
In ten minutes I'll be late for the door
I like that old time rock'n' roll
----- Old Time Rock & Roll - Bob Seger
I too like the old definition of geeks - the ones that write
php/perl/pyhton one liners, who know the language specs (or at least
the urls where the specs live), or those who know arcane geometrical
and calculus formulas and so on. Someone who know their subject
deeply. In my opinion, blogging and podcasting(and other web 2.0
shiny objects) are so shallow subjects that even thought you may know
the nuances of them well, I will not consider you to be a geek. But
that is just my opinion.