Comments on: Yeah, Geeks are Replacing Hipsters. But Why?

By: T

Sat, 06 Nov 2010 10:23:01 +0000

Still though, means nothing for the cleverness that ‘savviness’ and ‘geekiness’ are mere shadows of. The consumer may become savvy but if that’s their only function with regard to technology then they’re just as behind the real edge as ever, if not more if you believe that the curve that leads to it is steeper than linear.

Furthermore, technical ability distributed across the public is not something that increases monotonically in the aggregate. It’s something that expands and contracts throughout transitional periods, depending on how much ability is demanded from the individual. Not much is demanded from simple ‘consumers’.

I don’t know how to work a cat’s whisker radio or fiddle with a vacuum tube, or even earlier, how to create my own ammunition, fix a wagon wheel, or clean a killed animal, let alone farm crops, but I know the how and why of jailbreaking iOS devices, or how to compile my own Linux kernel, or how to write menial programs. I also know how to disassemble a motorcycle, replace a tire, or connect a coax RF modulator to a VCR to adapt composite video to an analog TV.

Some of these things the next generation, distributed along some curve, will continue to find worth knowing. Definitely a lot of them will disappear. Naturally some people will know some or all of these things but I would be willing to bet that the next generation might be less capable because they don’t have to be as clever (and even if that’s not certain, their technical palette might shrink), which is my point. The better consumerist processes get at creating and satisfying consumer demand more and more efficiently, the more that loop of production and consumption will tighten and accelerate until it takes virtually nothing at all to be a consumer, but the value of what one consumes increases to the limit of whatever production scheme one works under.

Obviously this convergence isn’t a simple one (hopefully) but the point is that technology and the true wealth of knowledge it should facilitate are meaningless when objectified, and in this vein are merely being used as tokens to facilitate a process that is fundamentally not different from before–only intensified.

By: “it’s not so bad bein’ trendy”: Geeks as hip cats? « Single/White/Geek

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 01:08:55 +0000

[...] think this old meme is still funny. And its like slapping the real deals in the face and telling us that this is what we are like or that we’re different so we’re [...]

By: Nav

Nav — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 20:53:02 +0000

I thought I’d addressed those questions in the post, but I’m also notoriously unclear. Sorry ’bout that. What I was arguing was that geeks are ‘masters of tech’ and tech has usurped fashion as the cultural marker of cool/savviness/being on the cutting edge. My point was that the location of cool has shifted but the underlying reasons stay the same – i.e. that we fetishise what we desire and thus, geeks as the manifestation of a new culture of cool, become desired.

As for accessibility vs. tech savviness, I’d disagree – while there’s still a clear distinction between nerds/geeks and regular folk, I think people do know more now: how to get music on to your iPod, switch video inputs on a TV, email attachments etc.

By: Matthew Gallant

Matthew Gallant — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 06:24:36 +0000

It’s a shame you can’t link to the original article, I’d be curious to know what exactly about geeks is now hip. iPods and Razrs? Wiis and DSs? Macbook Airs? That seems more like the next step of consumerism than anything to do with geekiness. People aren’t generally becoming more tech-savvy, the technology is just becoming more accessible.

Of course, I might just be a little hung up on the definition of the word “geek.”