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Salon on Geeks and Sex
Runna^Muck was the first to write to us about a new Salon article discussing the sexual climate in Silicon Valley. Not nearly as good as other articles on the subject, this feature covers everything from Geeks & their dominant tastes as well as why foreign workers don't get lucky.
Upgrade GirlFriend 1.0 to Wife 1.0
Last year a friend of mine upgraded from GirlFriend 1.0 to Wife 1.0 and found that it's a memory hog leaving very little system resources available for other applications.
He is only now noticing that Wife 1.0 is also spawning Child Processes which are further consuming valuable resources. No mention of this particular phenomenon was included in the product brochure or the documentation, though other users have informed him that this is to be expected due to the nature of the application. Not only that, Wife 1.0 installs itself such that it is always launched at system initialization, where it can monitor all other system activity. He's finding that some applications such as PokerNight 10.3, BeerBash 2.5, and PubNight 7.0 are no longer able to run in the system at all, crashing the system when selected (even though they always worked fine before). During installation, Wife 1.0 provides no option as to the installation of undesired Plug-ins such as MotherInLaw 55.8 and SisterInLaw Beta release. Also, system performance seems to diminish with each passing day.
Some features he'd like to see in the upcoming Wife 2.0:
I myself decided to avoid the headaches associated with Wife 1.0 by sticking with Girlfriend 2.0. Even here, however, I found many problems. Apparently you cannot install Girlfriend 2.0 on top of Girlfriend 1.0. You must uninstall Girlfriend 1.0 first. Other users say this is a long standing bug that I should have known about. Apparently the versions of Girlfriend have conflicts over shared use of the I/O port. You would think they would have fixed such a stupid bug by now. To make matters worse, the uninstall program for Girlfriend 1.0 doesn't work very well leaving undesirable traces of the application in the system.
Another thing -- all versions of Girlfriend continually popup little annoying messages about the advantages of upgrading to Wife 1.0
*** BUG WARNING ****
Wife 1.0 has an undocumented bug. If you try to install Mistress 1.1 before uninstalling Wife 1.0, Wife 1.0 will delete MSMoney files before doing the uninstall itself. Then Mistress 1.1 will refuse to install; claiming insufficient resources.
I'm trying to figure out if all that pseudocode was really there to be cute and stylish, or if it was to conceal the lack of susbstance. But this is Salon, so both answers may be correct.
When I'm singing a ballad and a pair of underwear lands on my head, I hate that. It really kills the mood.
-Tom Jones
You all miss the point. Human behavior related to dating and sex always in large part determined by protocols. It can't avoid that -- instincts and culture always create some kind of protocol that determines the basics -- how complete strangers are supposed to start a conversation, how reaction can be judged, etc. Personality of every person determines, what actually is done, yet the basics are just as pre-determined as normal spoken language. There is nothing insulting to our human nature in it, strict rules of English language didn't make Shakespeare a worse writer than if he invented a language for himself, they provided means of expression. And just like people now have trouble understanding some thing in Shakespeare because he used slightly different language from modern English, cultural rules, involved in dating may be completely unknown or misunderstood by a person who comes from different culrural background -- especially from different country.
When people spend their whole life in the same or similar cultural environment they spend their childhood absorbing ("learning" won't be the right word) things that aren't completely based on instinct yet never are expressed in plain words. When any serious change of environment happens people always face the fact that environment changed and their rules don't work. People, unless they are very perceptive or interested in psychology, can't understand, what rules don't work -- they never "knew" rules that they apply in the first place. They get wrong ideas about what people are trying to express. My own main complaint for a long time was a tone, Americans use in their speech, smiles at completely inappropriate times, etc -- it looked like Americans allow themselves to be or look blatantly insincere with their friends and co-workers at the extent that I would consider to be a deep personal insult -- like if in the restaurant a waiter would bring me some dish that costs about $100 and supplied me with plastic fork and knife (no offence to people who didn't mean to insule me -- this is how they looked in the content of my, completely foreign for them, Russian culture).
Most of emotions, values and even behavior norms are universal (more universal than my spelling of "behavior" for sure). No self-respecting male geek (I am talking about men here) would tell a girl that he loves her, and be disinterested in her feelings, or would not try to make her feel comfortable. But the form, in which he would do that, or, even worse, form, in which he would try to start a conversation or judge first reaction to him, would unlikely match local cultural norms. Neither he nor girl would really understand it -- both are acting on things that never were written, expressed or explained to them, but both would feel discomfort in such a situation. In modern culture such discomfort is often expressed as that "chemistry" wasn't compatible (or, in subcultures that are not so fond for pseudoscientific explanations, "I have got a feeling that it isn't for me"), but this is wrong -- no "chemistry" unless it's some really noticeable stench of sweat, can be incompatible with everybody around, and no serious negative "feeling" can be derived from one minute of conversation with a stranger that behaves reasonably courteous. What we see here is plain and simple incompatibility of language, not some unreasonable expectations that human will behave like computer.
The really bad part of it is that no one seriously studied cultural norms of that kind -- people much more embarrassed to dig into "in what situation and how exactly it's appropriate to say 'how are you?' and demonstrate that the answer will be ignored" or "how is it appropriate to reject a guy, romantically interested in you while pretending to care about his feelings, so you wouldn't feel bad about yourself" than in any kind of sexually-freudian crap that ever was written in psychology books or was exchanged between psychoanalyst and patients. This mean, geeks, most of whom represent rather closed subculture, and especially foreign geeks, who represent completely different, sometimes hostile in their base cultures, have no means to learn them unless they will find a way to re-live at least teenage years immersed in this culture (as members, not as outsiders, like even local geeks are at their teenage years).
I understand that the approach that I have used here is clearly and blatantly geeky and definitely not compatible with an attitude, normal in this society. Still it doesn't make me wrong, and history knows a lot of cases when only this kind of approach succeeded in discovering (or expressing, or just in raising awareness) of problems that plagued the societies for decades. I don't know of any solution -- if I knew I would definitely used it for myself -- but I believe, people should realize that this problem exists, and try to solve it, not accuse geeks in "not being sensitive enough", suppress all thoughts of it, pretending that things are supposed to be that way.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
I think that if geeks expect that they will be able to find romance at work, there's nothing like an engineering company for that not to come true. Yeah, I guess it'd be nerdvana to have someone that actually understands what you do, but from my experience, that's probably not going to happen due to the abysmal M/F ratio.
The problem then becomes where does the average geek find someone. Many, if not most, are too shy/introverted/socially awkward to go to social situations for the purpose of meeting people. And it is important that a programmer's mate understands and is able to live with the life that goes with being a programmer. This is not a quality that I see in the general public.
But even more important, IMHO, is that you don't want to find romance at work. ...
This is true, regardless of profession. Sometimes it's worth the risk, but it would have to be pretty convincing for me (not that I'm looking; I'm married). But, that doesn't mean that you can't look within the industry or on the net.
-Jennifer
I'm a regular reader of Salon, and this article was pretty disappointing. They, and other magazines, have focused on this before, and it still remains a non-issue.
/* I knew a geek who had sex once...*/
/* I knew a girl once... */
/* Story */
/* Two engineers are walking across campus, when a beautiful woman */
/* rides by on a bicycle. She suddenly vaults off of the bike and */
/* takes off all of her clothes, addressing the first engineer: */
/* "Take anything you want!" she pants lustily, standing naked. */
/* Without batting an eye, the engineer gets on her bike and */
/* pedals away, his buddy jogging with him. "Good choice" says */
/* the buddy, "The clothes probably wouldn't have fit you." */
/* End Story */
/* This may well be the poorest way */
/* of interjecting a thought that I've ever seen. */
/* It works for commenting, but at least the comments */
/* mostly relate quite directly to the code. */
/* In opposition to being a departure from the primary objective */
/* they provide further insight into the confusing aspects. */
/* There is no need to use these, as academia has their own version. */
/* They're called footnotes. */
/* Astonishingly, they're very seldom used to invoke anecdotes, either. */
/* -l */
Why aren't geeks having 'enough' sex? I don't know, but it might have something to do with long working days and lots of stress. Perhaps it has a little bit to do with a lot of greeks being 'fringed' as youngsters and not being into the courtship rituals. Maybe we just don't like people. Perhaps there are a fair proportion of geeks who, having hacked evolution, are not very eager to have their handy-dandy prehensile tails discovered.
This article wasn't even written as a social study, but was fragmented into near unreadability as a result of both the pseudo-code and the lack of flow invoked by the author. The only interesting point was the nod to culture shock and immigration.
This does not keep up with Salon's tradition of doing interesting social commentary. This article was bland and covered issues which people are familiar with from exposure to the canon of geek jokes.
Did Salon really do more than regurgitate the above, backing it up with the knowledge that, gosh gee, a lot of geeks really don't get laid too often?
The best way that this story could have been handled would be to look at the 'new' business and social environment and interaction in Silicon Valley. I know nothing about it, as I work as I work in Ireland -- mix business with pleasure, anyone? I'm curious as to just how people interact, meet each other and what not in an environment that seems insanely pressurised to me, from the congested traffic to the high rent and long hours.
When I'm really engrossed in a project, I know that my social interaction comes with the project team and, occasionally, bystanders, for the most part. Does this occur in Silicon Valley, as well, where friendships and romances arise from convenience? If so, I'm sure the same ramifications exist for work romances, but what's the social view of, say, a millionaire CEO dating his secretary?
For some reason, picturing some programmer millionaire dating his secretary seems much more innocuous to me than his Wall Street equivalent. The perceived innocence of geekdom? Another point they didn't touch on.
That's becoming rather addictive. I think that my next project will be commented in obvious, un-enlightening anecdotes.