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The Rise and Fall of the Geek
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."
There is already a counter opinion posted at The Reg.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Ever see Revenge of the Nerds? Or one of its trillion sequels? This would not be a pretty sight.
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
Is this really bad. Some of the examples he uses, like the geek inability to defend the DMCA. Maybe no one who knows what they are talking about can defend it because it really shouldn't be. I mean, couldn't you bemoan that most all people think murder is bad, and thusm they are all sheep of the same flock. OR, maybe murder really is bad.
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
Geeks have a long and rich heritage they should be proud of. The Geek is and always will be an important part of the circus sideshow. Without them biting the heads off live chickens, the red neck circus patron will have no one to compare themselves favorably to before the beer kicks in.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Ever since the days of the caveman and the invention of the fire and wheel by the First Geek, Man has been arguing and warring. All arguments are based on misunderstandings, which indicates that two suitably intelligent people would always get along. For too long we have been trying to educate the stupider among us to reach this ideal state and I say that now is the time to give up.
Geeks! Abandon your non-geek wives/husbands and friends! Come with me into the wilderness where we will forge a new society based on intelligence and anime! We will eat naught but pizza and drink naught but Mountain Dew! We may be smelly, but dammit, we won't need tech support numbers either! You have nothing to lose but your dignity!
No more petty squabbling? But that's one of the quintessential features of a geek. If there weren't constant meaningless arguments about the same topics over and over, the internet as we know it would not exist.
"player 4 hit player 1 with 0 stroms"
No date => no girlfriend => no wife => no geek kids.
Who is this guy to define what *I* am like. Yes, I do disagree w/the DMCA, the RIAA, and Microsoft. I don't like the fact that the US is becoming more and more government controlled. I don't like the fact that the PEOPLE of the US are allowing this to happen w/o a fight.
I don't like the fact this this person believes we had strict boundaries. I don't like the fact that he calls us "pasty, long haired, UN*X t-shirt wearing" individuals.
I am against things that are wrong. Microsoft, the DMCA, and recent US policies are WRONG.
I don't have a pasty complexion, I don't have long hair, I don't live on pizza and Mountain Dew, and I certainly don't wear Unix related t-shirts.
He is the one setting boundaries on us, not the group.
Geeks stand up for what they believe in. We are typically young and brash and want to see change made. We are the protesters of the new millenium. We use a different medium than was used before. We are who we are, not what someone labels us as.
Please forgive the rant. He was just wrong for creating a false label for the "geek".
The sooner we can put our petty squabbling aside the sooner we can get move on to the real issue.
Which is better Star Trek or Star Wars?
He says geeks used to argue over the standard stuff, vi vs. emacs, keyboard vs. mouse, X vs. console, PC vs. microcomputer. Fair enough. Now he says that nobody argues against DRM, the DMCA, and invasions of privacy.
I suppose Soviet Communists in the olden days would argue about whether rubber or leather boots were better in springtime, but nobody felt justified saying, "Those capitalists aren't that bad!" Likewise, these days in America, there is plenty of talk about whether N'Bizkit is better than Limp Korn, or whatever retarded ear-shit people listen to. Yet nobody stands up and says, "You know, we really should let the state run all of our industry."
So big surprise, we're all in agreement about things that threaten the foundation and definition of the group. What an insight, you might as well go write an internet editorial about it and get Michael to post on Slashdot.
Ya know, it really is telling when I got halfway through this post and thought to myself, "Well goddamn, this must have been another piece of drivel that Micheal thought was really clever, like that time he shared with us the story about adjusting your TVs brightness control to play PS2." What crap.
I've always been kinda fringe geek. Not really a great programmer, more an observer, plotter, and wannabe administrator. Not nearly as geek as many I know, but still geek enough to be considered by people who aren't geeky at all. Unfortunately, we've got one thing making "geekdom" feel polluted, and that's the cram-away certification crowd.
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.
My own pointless vanity vintage computing page
Just what exactly do geeks have against the Routing Information Protocol?
www.timcoleman.com is a total waste of your time. Never go there.
...if I'll conform to some media stereo type. I speak for myself and don't need no stinking clique focus group telling me what to be.
Jesus next we'll have a tech website that champions free speech but fails to run stories about itself.
*sniff* whatever happened to Jon Katz?
Conformity : Proudly serving painfully boring people since time began....
geeks are misfits, not some social group you can mobilize, the more mainstream the issue the more support you will lose and the more fragmentation you will see. The authors' failure to understand, just highlights the fact that he's not a geek but a suit trying to be cool. The sub-culture WAS NEVER tied together by commonality but by opposition of the homogenization of culture. Here this 'guest' editor is bemoaning the lack of just such a thing....
The counter culture is STILL there they've just shunned the icons proposed for them by the 'man' and those that would make a buck of them.
TGIF, and rant off......
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Since when has being a geek been political? Granted, I agree with the majority on Slashdot on certain issues, but not with others. I thought geekdom was about a love for technology.
If being a geek means I'm some kind of political activist hippie, count me out.
"Others, such as the hatred of Microsoft and the loathing of Spam come from a quite reverse philosophy - a principled distain of the side-effects of capitalism, betraying socialist ancestry."
Yeah, whatever. My hatred of Microsoft comes from the lack of stability in their operating systems, and their predatory, monopolistic practices (which have been confirmed in a court of law, thank you very much)
And Spam? Do I even have to address this point? I hate it because it wastes my time, it wastes internet bandwidth and storage space, and the people sending it don't even really have to pay very much to inconvenience the entire email reading planet. It's unbalanced.
"If none of this is making sense to you, try the following mental exercise. Could you sit in a pub with a group of geeks, defend the RIP Act, and convince them that you were still one of them?"
Yes I could. Perhaps I have more open minded friends than you, who are willing to entertain an argument without ostracizing someone with an alternative viewpoint.
I'm a geek because I've loved fooling with computers my entire life, have a profound desire to see technology used to improve the world, and have developed quite a bit of hardware, software, and programming expertise. My political affiliations don't enter into it. Neither do my race, sex, nationality, or religous beliefs.
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
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?
"Geeks" aren't becoming "homogenous" or any such thing. The only thing that's going on is many (not all even!) are up in arms about recent abridgements of their freedom from legislation and Microsoft's new tactics. This has nothing to do with homogenity, it simply has to do with a (a couple actually) common enemy.
And to say that all geeks get upset whenever MS does anything is simply ludicrous, and ignorant of the facts. There are a ton of geeks who are perfectly happy with MS products, but usually not with MS's current drive towards DRM and Palladium et al., which is perfectly understandable and reasonable considering the affect those types of things will have on them.
This is just stupid...
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
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.
I've never understood why people want to be referred to as a geek. It's not a pleasant title, rather it's an insult. Class bullies picks on the scrawny "four-eyed geek". If someone calls you a geek, it's your turn to stand up for yourself. "Geek" has such a negative conotation to it that I will never refer to myself as one, regardless of my involvement with computers and science.
The rebuttal rebuts some stuff, but dismisses the following paragraph, rather than challenging it.
Stranger still is the lack of consistency amongst these beliefs. Many values, such as the love of privacy and free speech come from a broadly libertarian tradition evolving from the philosophy of Mill and Locke. Others, such as the hatred of Microsoft and the loathing of Spam come from a quite reverse philosophy - a principled distain of the side-effects of capitalism, betraying socialist ancestry. Still others come from a strong defence of certain rights (notably fair use of copyrighted materials) which seem to be primarily based on rational self-interest, rather than any particular ideology. From Tom's op-ed.
By way of reply:
Humanism is a rational philosophy informed by science, inspired by art, and motivated by compassion. Affirming the dignity of each human being, it supports the maximization of individual liberty and opportunity consonant with social and planetary responsibility. It advocates the extension of participatory democracy and the expansion of the open society, standing for human rights and social justice. Free of supernaturalism, it recognizes human beings as a part of nature and holds that values--be they religious, ethical, social, or political--have their source in human experience and culture. Humanism thus derives the goals of life from human need and interest rather than from theological or ideological abstractions, and asserts that humanity must take responsibility for its own destiny. From the Humanist Magazine.
Which is, it seems to me, totally consistent with the three things he names. The first two are obvious, but humanistic opposition to DRM needs some explanation. The RIAA/MPAA are trying to prevent the emergence of a new, popularly empowered culture from which they won't be able to make as much money.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
I think it's more like a case of Bush implementing the Recession and SaberRattler interfaces while extending BigOil and SuckyTexasRangers. He's been throwing a lot of exceptions lately which Congress isn't handling very well.
There is a popular misconception in today's culture that all geeks use and endorse Linux.
..."
"Geeks may argue about which Linux distro is best
I would classify myself as a geek and I never felt terribly comfortable using Linux. I've dabbled here and there, kept Linux boxen lying around, but have never used any as my primary machine. I've been a devout BSD fan...until OS X came along.
"...but they all know that a Good OS Has to Be Free. "
bullshit. A good OS has to be good. I'll pay for an operating system that I think is solid. I had no problems paying $129 for Jaguar a few weeks ago.
Geeks are people who are curious about technology and make a living and a hobby out of utilizing technology different ways. Oh wait.... I forgot what site I was posting on. Long live Linux and down with those imperial Microsuck bastards
"My mother never saw the irony in calling me a son-of-a-bitch." - Jack Nicholson
Hmm, then how come there was a counter-argument posted within two and a half hours. Thats not really a sign of monoculture or a 'party-line' which is toed by all. Not to mention the many and varied opinions which are expressed in just about every thread here on /.
;)
Yes, there are unifying forces at work, but there always has been and hopefully always will. It's this solid foundation which allows the community to discuss, argue and explore just about any idea which we feel we want, from god knows how many viewpoints and angles. We are an open and evolving community, one which has a greater role to play in society and a greater voice than ever. This is probably why people know about the pro-open, anti-infringement stances that are taken on many subjects. It does not mean that there isn't diversity, it just means that some of the more important messages _are_ getting across to the wider world.
If someone wants to take this as something which it is not (no names mentioned) then that is their right. If someone (no names mentioned) wants to start another lively debate, then this is certainly the way to do it
viva la revolution!
The author of this article seems to believe the following: If you distrust government then you're a libertarian. If you distrust business then you're a socialist. Since many geeks have a healthy distrust of both government and business, and you can't be both a libertarian and a socialist, the author concludes that geek politics is therefore hypocritical (though he doesn't use that word). This is a serious flaw, as our conventional view of left-right politics really doesn't have a place for someone who thinks that neither government nor business should accumulate too much power. We are therefore led to conclude that such views are erroneous, and we must therefore choose a king to serve: government or business, communism or capitalism.
This is perhaps one of the greatest dangers to "geek politics".
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
Right, those are the only two possible rationales for moral theory or public policy. (And Mill, a libertarian? Does he mean John Stuart Mill, the utilitarian? WTF is this guy smoking--his assumptions are completely different from Locke's. In fact I'd say all of the positions stated in this guy's passage can be justified in utilitarianism, AKA the greatest good for the greatest number.)
"Geek politics" follow a really simple direction--more power for individuals, less power for businesses and governments. (It brings to mind Distributivism or micro-capitalism, actually.) Any inconsistancy or hypocrisy this guy sees is simply not there.
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.
Hey,
... rise up and use our voice for progress and not petty squabbling.
The geeks amongst us should
He's right, you know. People in the computer industry need to rise up and use our voice for progress, not petty squabbling! Death to Microsoft!
That was sarcasm, you see? Rather than using our voices for progress, slashdotters engage in petty squabbling with Microsoft. An I the only one who finds this ironic?
Michael
"Goodness me, how unlike the FBI to abuse the trust of the American public." -- The Onion
I don't like the fact that the US is becoming more and more government controlled.
And the Government is becoming more corporate-controlled. The combination of these two is the source of the current mess.
We should yeah, but this is Slashdot, right? Did I take a wrong turn?
Er, maybe we should be working toward a model that emphasizes free wheeling discourse and a respect for dissent rather than idealizing unanimity of purpose. Something scientific-methodish, as geeks generally are in sympathy with the world of science?
I'm not seeing this supposed "monoculture," to use the article's word. Rather that trying to exploit a unanimity that isn't really there except in opposition to The Bad Guys, maybe we should try to build a culture around curiosity.
Take a look at any /. story on the environment, and tell me if you see more informative posts -- "I read such and so about Greenland ice cores" -- or more whining about the supposed arguments of straw man "environmentalist" views. When curiosity gets superceded by hackneyed political views, geeks are just as tedious as the next person.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
I think he's a little off base. He attributes love of privacy and free speech as geek trademarks, but really don't virtually all people in free countries like these things?
Similarly he says we are unified in our hatred of Microsoft and loathing of Spam. Does anyone know anybody who likes spam? In my experience, many non-geeks hate Microsoft more than we do. You don't have to be a geek to dislike directly or indirectly the RIAA.
The traits he points out referencing geeks as a monoculture are really just traits of individual humans in general. It's like saying we're a monoculture because we all want to vote or because we dislike junk mail. While it's true that we tend to be a little more evangelical about these things, it's usually just because we know a little more about the situations than the average joe.
Prevent email address forgery. Publish SPF records for y
Others, such as the hatred of Microsoft and the loathing of Spam come from a quite reverse philosophy - a principled distain [sic] of the side-effects of capitalism, betraying socialist ancestry.
Microsoft is a convicted monopolist; their actions are not a "side-effect of capitalism", their actions have been anti-competitive, anti-free market and, arguably, anti-democratic.
Spam, too, is theft of service--a crime--not a "side-effect of capitalism". I pay for my mail bandwidth, and most of it is taken up by stuff I didn't pay for. Big companies can have anybody prosecuted who as much as connects to their server in a way they don't like, why do I have to put up with megabytes of spam every day?
Geeks understand the machinations of power, influence and money a lot better than Steinberg gives them credit for, and apparently a lot better than Steinberg himself does. The difference between geeks and other participants in the political process is that geeks often won't shut up about it and they take a long-term perspective and won't accept expedient short-term compromises that only make the situation worse in the long term. The opposition of geeks to Microsoft, the RIAA, and spam doesn't derive from a hypothetical "socialist ancestry", it arises out of a concern that high technology can only prosper in a democratic society, in a free market, and in a country where people can discuss and exchange ideas free from private or public interference.
Maybe geeks won't be able to prevent the destruction of free speech, free markets, or democratic and constitutional principles in America, but we are certainly not going to shut up about it. If the rest of the country ignores us, that's their loss. We are doing all we can by speaking up.
I happen to find /. amusing, and something fun to read while waiting for something else. I find the opinions to be interesting, and occasionally, funny. Yours is funny.
If you are arguing against my sig (which is off-topic, BTW), then argue against it with your intellect. If you are arguing against (or for) my comments, please do the same.
If that is all you have to say, than I feel sorry for you.
Apologies for the offtopic, but this really needed to be said at some point :)
-WS
An operating system should be like a light switch... simple, effective, easy to use, and designed for everyone.
When someone asks me to rise up, I reach for my wallet.
The reason I'm a geek in the first place is that I place very little trust in the activities of groups and crowds. I think people tend to lose IQ points the more they place themselves in a situation where you get hats, or uniforms, or armbands, or chants, or fucking political agendas, for that matter.
I'm not particularly misanthropic, but I do think that taking a sociological phenomenon based on an inability to easily conform, then asking them to come up with a coherent platform is an exercise in futility, if not stupidity. There are plenty of geeks in this world that I couldn't stand 10 minutes in a crowded elevator with much less stand side by side in a political rally. That doesn't mean we can't swap tips on router programming.
Besides, have you seen some of our political beliefs? I know I personally hold a few that could be used to scare chickens to death as a less cruel means of slaughter.
Disclaimer: MINAA (Mummy! I'm Not An Animal!)
Spam is a direct capitalistic, commercialistic creation. Again, the problem becomes the fact that a shouting match ensues to see who can get the loudest, most ubiquitous voice to the consumer for the least amount of money...well, nearly free e-mail multiple times a day seems to be working in that regard.
There are plenty of other reasons to hate these two things, some of which you named, but it seems a good portion of your views are still in line with the author's analysis.
Mordor...a magical, mythical land where women are more rare than dragons--but where every man would rather find a dragon
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.
This on-target editorial is in tune with Lawrence Lessig's question a few weeks ago: What Have You Been Doing About It? (Lessig's answer: not much, if anything.)
When identification with a community becomes more important to each community member than the goals or shared behaviors of the community, that community is well on the way to becoming an irrelevant cult. Why? Because an individual need only adopt the accoutrements of the community to claim membership. The need to actually make a substantive contribution to furthering the community's objectives, goes away. In fact, the community's objectives fade away until the sole objective becomes reinforcing each individual's association with the group. In other words, it dissolves into a "us versus them" scenario, where the only thing defining "us" is "not them" status.
The evidence is here on Slashdot every day: Few expressions of commitment to do anything about DMCA/RIAA/DRM except pen denunciatory posts; Use of "lusers" in reference to "users" (if your an admin, they're really your "customers"); assertions that Unix users are more intelligent than users of other operating systems; unwillingess to consider other points of view; readiness to censor dissenting voices (known as "moderation" around here); a dogmatic belief that everything the "enemy" says and does is a lie and, therefore, unworthy of a second's thought; and, in the obvious case of many posters, an adopted posture of cynicism lacking the credibility of real experience.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
I agree with alot of the ideals the common Slashdotter will but I am by no means Liberal. I am for smaller government. I am for people helping themselves and not taking a few bucks out of my wallet every paycheck which is what a government aid program is. I AM for free speech. I am against using P2P to steal (Napster) and using P2P for what it's meant (sharing files that are not copyrighted), but I am against the RIAA making it hard to exercise my fair use rights. I am against the MPAA telling me if I live in another country that I can't buy a DVD their and have it play in my player. I am against them telling me I can't make a fansite on the web celbrating and promoting my favorite TV show. I am FOR the constitution including the second amendment. I am against cameras in public places unless they are controlled by tourists. I am against using technology to ticket someone automagically because they were speeding because thier kid was hurt. I am against the idiot laws that are making clerks card (and possibly swiping a mag stripe on my license) everyone when they want to buy a beer (even though I am OBVIOUSLY over 21). I am FOR everything this country, as a whole, stands for. I am in AGREEMENT with Bush on the war on terrorism, but in disagreement with the need for these STUPID laws/rules regarding things like laptops being used during takeoff, GPS's not allowed at all, cellphones not allowed unless at gate, ILLEGAL search and seizures and other stupid stuff like that. I am FOR studying things LOGICALLY and using the results of that study to guide actions. Let's study the effects of these devices on a aircrafts Avionics. Have there ever been studies done or is this just so the airlines satisfy some stupid notion like that once you get on that plane THEY are your BOSS (instead of treating you like a human being when your not being an asshole). I am a geek. I use Windows, Linux, AIX, Solaris and whatever else I need to do to make a few bucks. Sue me because I don't agree that Microsoft is a monopoly, but I hate them because their os's are unstable and they assume that I don't know what I am doing (not because they are the most popular right now). So kiss my shiny metal ass if I don't fit your damn image for a geek. I am a GEEK and proud of it. Who's next?
Gorkman
It's all death. The rest is just nomenclature we invent to justify our actions.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Its really outrageous to say that being against Microsoft is part of the geek way. Microsoft engineers are as geekie as they get.
They don't get all riled up about freedom and capitalism, they just sit in their offices and write code. They found a benevolent master that will gives them mountain dew and gives them free pizza.
Politics are for liberal arts students, not computer geeks.
Yep, even the world's finest newspaper just ran an article about democracy geeks.
As for the big distinctions between the current geek and the aboriginal geek, I agree. The people hanging out in computer labs would hardly be recognized by the early primitve neolithic hunter-geek. We forge email using holes in sendmail and tools such as prebuilt rootkits; they forged email using a hot fire and tools of chipped stone, and later, bronze and iron.
As others have pointed out, it was the development of agriculture that allowed the hunter-geeks to change from a nomadic lifestyle to a more stationary one, resulting in both an interest in the world around them (politics, opposite sex, etc) and often a tendency to be slightly overweight.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
May I add death penalty to the list of 'killing peoples' which are legal (at least in some countries).
#include "coucou.h"
That's great how you picked the closing points of each view, which were practically afterthoughts, and declared that to be the "good portion" of my views.
When I curse Microsoft because Windows crashes, it's not because I have "disdain of the side-effects of capitalism, betraying socialist ancestry." That's a load of over-analytical, pedantic nonsense.
When I curse the spam-merchants because I have to manually go through multiple email accounts daily and methodically delete tons of crap, once again, it's not because I have "disdain of the side-effects of capitalism, betraying socialist ancestry." I don't hate advertising. I have no problem with TV commercials, billboards, banner ads, or whatever. It's the physical act of having to spend time dealing with it that I hate. And Geeks are not alone in that.
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
It's anti-intellectualism got more fierce, and alienated all geeks already. And, of course, author fails to grasp that "right" and "left" ideologies' "ancestry" has little to do with that -- it's just both ideologies in their simplistic/extreme forms became merely shells that intellectuals grew up and abandoned.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
You forgot to move the case statements to the same indentation level as the switch statement.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Since I first started reading and posting to /. I have resisted the motion that there is "a geek community." "Geek" is a person with a certain kind of interest in things scientific and technological (not necessarily in that order). Beyond that, in my experience it is as varied and diverse a collection of individuals as you could hope to find.
Look at any issue of politics that arises in this forum. I see plenty of my fellow "tax-and-spend" liberals and hordes of reactionary libertarians. Hardly a herd of like-thinkers. Look the the flamewars that emerge between Windows/Linux advicates, Linux/BSD advocates, GPL fans/GPL opponents, hell, emacs/vi. "Geeks" are not some sort of monoculture. And people who claim they speak for the "geek community" are doing so because they want to take a position in front of it. In other words, they are trying to gain power from association with a perceived collective of people.
But we aren't a monoculture. We aren't even a culture -- we're a shared enthusiasm for techie things. There are communities within geekdom, but there isn't a single community, a single outlook, a single political stance. I'm tired of people speaking for me. This guy doesn't know me, he doesn't speak for me, and there mere accident that we might agree about one or many things does not give him license to claim my voice.
I always imagined Katz doing this article on /., not some guest at El Reg.
Imagine:
Has the day of the geek gone the way of feelings of Security Americans feel on their home soil? As we survey the post-columbine waste land that is the New Order of the world, we find that more and more, geeks are losing touch with their roots. Gone are the days of vi versus emacs, while now we stand upon the precipice of disorder over the the likes of the DMCA and DRM. Why is our beloved order of geekdom crumbling around us? Has September 11th ripped our geek hearts and souls out, as Columbine did previously. Please read on as I follow the path of the Ruination of Geeks in HellMonth PI: Tragedy over X vs Windows.
sigh, I miss Katz.
They stuck me in an institution, said it was the only solution, to...protect me from the enemy, myself
What follows is not necessarily true, but a fun way to think about things. Sweeping generalizations here we come!
.net. But many of them also share mp3s and might have some personal doubts about Microsoft's hegemony, the RIAA, et al. Most dislike AOL, and all tend to have to fix family and friends' computers. Some of them even run a linux box at home.
/etc/ directory. They tend to be freelance, and find the idea of certification a bit silly. Most hate the notion of DRM, although some may secretly welcome the challenge of breaking new copy protection schemes.
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?
Maybe you should distinguish between geeks and techies.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
I just tripped over some cat5. I can't wait to get wireless.
>
Without the kind of consensus Tom complains about, the possibility to organize to achieve our goals in the political arena simply would not exist.
As for his complaints about our community losing its purity because we've been forced to take a interest in politics, I could say historically that political newsgroups were among the first things to appear on Usenet. But the fact of the matter is, that the integrity of our computer networks now depends just as much on what the politicians will let us do legally as on our technological skills.
In the case of the DMCA, if vendors use it to suppress information about exploits and don't bother to patch, the bad guys get to hammer us and we don't get to figure out why.
If we want to be free to use our own computers as we will, not as a Hollywood content provider community incapable of securing their own Website dictates, we don't have a lot of choice about getting political.
Tech Public Policy stuff
It seems to me that the "monoculture" of geekdom that this article refers to is nothing more than a reaction to the forces working against the common geek principles. Though we may have our differences, we see common threats to our ways of life and so we let a lot of our points of contention slide away because there are bigger things at stake. Where the outside world doesn't pry at us we have plenty of contention such as:
-emacs vs. vi
-liux distro A vs. linux distro B
-bsd vs. linux
We have no end of things to argue about amongst ourselves. The monoculture this article speaks about has mostly to do with how technology has become more a part of mainstream culture and thus drawn the interest of powers that have not normally cared about what us geeks were doing. Most of us stand against the MPAA and the RIAA, etc, because we see them trying to limit what we as geeks have always been able to do. We all want to have the freedom to do what we want with our toys and we don't take kindly to people messing with that freedom.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Damn, where's my mod points when I need them - this is the best argument against DRM I've ever seen. When DRM takes hold - no more experimenting, no more progress. We are done.
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.
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.
blog
As far as I'm concerned, "geeks" did not develop some political mono-culture, politicians (and cartels) started to make a political movement out of restricting the activity of computer programmers and other technically minded people. Of course there are going to be technically minded people who sell out to the enemies of progress, that's inevitable. Those people will end up being sacrificed as soon as it is convienient to those in power.
The reason why technically minded people agree that things like Microsoft or DRM are bad is because they have had a bad experience with them, and they understand the cause of the problem. My sister did not understand it when she tried to hook her new DVD player up to a TV with no RCA jacks and the picture wouldn't work. She ended up buying a TV with RCA jacks to replace her old TV. I'm sure average people who use computers on which MS has deliberately broken some application they don't like don't necessarily blame MS any more than they do if their modem burns out in a thunderstorm.
Geeks have their eyes open, and they can't pretend un-learn things just because they are inconvienient to the **AA. The philosophy of the cartels and MS is often similar, and it boils down to, "Yes, we made that broke on purpose and if you want to fix it, we'll sick the law on you."
Oh, and plenty of geeks draw distinctions between illegal and legal uses for stuff like P2P. In fact, I'm sure that some originally thought, "Copying songs and ripping off the publisher is wrong, but that doesn't mean there aren't legitimate uses for this cool technology," but gave up that stance when they realized that the cartels might want to shut down P2P if it offered a competing business that was not illegal even more than they would shut down the illegal uses of P2P. Look at the history, the movie industry versus television, the movie industry versus the VCR and portions of the movie industry against DVD (and favoring Divx).
If you love technolgy, you will fight people who think the status quo is fine and want to destroy anything that shakes things up, even if robbing society of some knew technology will harm society as a whole.
If you don't love technology, then you are probably the kind of geek who eats broken glass or bites the heads off of chickens at a carnival blow-off and not a geek in the sense the author is. If you do love technology, then you will passionately hate attempts to restrict or suppress it. That's where a political "monoculture" comes from.
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
in '80s it was anthony michael hall in sixteen candles. social outcast. young. obsessive behavior. not getting anything in the bedroom.
;-P
;-P
in the '90s geek became bill gates (yeah, i know it's ironic anthony michael hall played bill gates in that tv docupic opposite noah wiley's steve jobs). rich. older. strictly technology-associated and more specifically computer-associated. probably getting something in the bedroom now.
i wonder what the meaning of geek will be in the '00s? either way, it drifts further away from what i think it should be.
i like the japanese word "otaku".
otaku carries all the obsessive weight of the american geek, but overemphasizes the social outcast part, and certainly none of the technophillic rich part. maybe we should disregard the waterdowned term geek in a world where business school dot com scammers could don the adjective in the late '90s to give them some sort of retrohip social cachet.
face it folks. the word "geek" is dead. real geeks should abandon the term.
from now on, refer to me as otaku.
please note, the word otaku must loose an association with a scary underside first though.
here are some sites which i guess could define obessive "otaku" best
car otaku
anime otaku
fish otaku!?
etc...
The otaku, the passionate obsessive, the information age's embodiment of the connoisseur, more concerned with the accumulation of data than of objects, seems a natural crossover figure in today's interface of British and Japanese cultures. I see it in the eyes of the Portobello dealers, and in the eyes of the Japanese collectors: a perfectly calm train-spotter frenzy, murderous and sublime. Understanding otaku-hood, I think, is one of the keys to understanding the culture of the web. There is something profoundly post-national about it, extra-geographic. We are all curators, in the post-modern world, whether we want to be or not.
-William Gibson
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
There is a certain amount of capitalism in the spamming world - there are some big spamhauses that take advantage of economies of scale to get bigger customers for their services, or who provide services to small-time spammers - and there are some non-spam-based businesses that use spamming as a tool and do it themselves rather than hiring out (e.g. pr0n sites whose primary business is distributing pr0n, not spamming.) But the cost of communications is low enough that the cost of getting into small-scale and medium-scale spamming doesn't require the tools of capitalism to run a business.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
HELLOOOOO!!! Mcfly! - Anybody home!?!?!
If you are a geek because you derive fun from technical geeky activities then OF COURSE you are going to oppose laws that make the fun technical geek activities illegal, and oppose companies that try to move the fun technical geeky activities out of the hands of the consumer. DUHH. I can't believe this guy is under the impression that this represents some kind of shift in thinking. It's just the logical continuation of the same mindset.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
A 400Mhz machine is no less frivolous than a 2.5G one if your primary focus is mp3 decoding. It's really not that strenuous an activity.
If you want to carry around 7-10 times more media for no good reason, that is simply stupidity on your part. It is not diligence of any kind.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
About your .sig: You cannot assume from a voluntary poll most people will ignore, that "47% of slashdot loves windows". First of all, most slashdot readers ignore the polls, and secondly as usual the poll question made it impossible to give the truthful answer for many people. In this case it didn't have any options for dual-booters and I bet dual-booting is a very common config among slashdotters. How many of those answering "Windows" use ONLY windows on their machine 100% of the time? The poll doesn't say.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
You seem to have access to a lot of imformation about slashdotters and what makes them tick. Where did you get your powers of ESP?
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Oh yeah, like Einstein, Bohr, Fermi, Shockley and others never made a political statement. All of them reached out, with more or less sucess to the people around them and the world. Einstein's letters about bomb making to FDR are platered on the walls of the Los Alamos Museum. Shockley's euginic views were less well recieved and he has been lambasted in mass media.
The register's editorial seems silly to me. The "Geek" agenda of privacy, information sharing and promotion of the common wheel are solidly grounded in the American Constitution and beliefs. Why is it easy to be flamed for advocating "sensible" DRM? Because there is no sensible DRM. Anyone who thinks that there is a sensible way to deny the ability to copy arbitrary files on a general pupose computer without losing ownership of that machine is ignrorant. There are real issues at stake here and losing any one of them IS a BIG LOSS. Thomas Jefferson thought of American culture as Anglican culture cured of its "morbidity" by the wide open spaces of the new continent its freedom and the optimism so inspired. Web culture contains embodies even more optimism due to the low costs of publishing and greater intelectual freedom. To accept masters in the digital world is to undo both web and American ideals.
Help the clueless and do it politely. People will seek your opinion on other issues if and when you do something bright. All of us influence the people around us. Some of us have more influence than others, but all of us should spend time considering the ultimate implications of the things we work on. Once we understand those implications we owe it to everyone to guide the world into the proper use of the tools we give it and see to it that others understand those implications too. Fight the greedy and evil with everything you've got - loud and clear.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Plato, Diogenes, Jesus, Gutenberg...
Jesus didn't change a thing about the world. Those who came later and grew a religion in his name did. And that's true regardless of whether you believe Jesus existed for real. Either way, the world-sweeping changes were done by others that came in the centuries that followed. I'd argue that the Roman Leader who chose to adopt Christianty to the empire, who is a person who WAS in political power, and not one of these quiet unassuming thinkers of which you speak, had a much greater impact on the world.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Well, they were, but it was just the BASIC interpeter. MS was writing BASICs for many of the small home computers of the day, and at the time the BASIC prompt pretty much WAS the main OS interface. But people didn't hate them then because, really, Microsoft does know how a heck of a lot about BASIC and they managed to make some really good interpeters with very limited resources. The problem came when they shifted over into OS'es and ended up writing OS'es that were just as primitive an OS as BASIC is a language.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
I never claimed anything was causeless.
You're saying, "Don't hate X. Hate the conditions that allowed X to exist."
Well, pardon my french, but fuck that. At the end of the day, people and organizations are responsible for their own activities, policies, and ethics, not their environment.
As an example, Microsoft forced OEM's to bundle Windows with every system or suffer dire penalties. Our "capitalist system where monopolies can operate with little or no regulation" might have allowed that situtation to evolve, but it certainly didn't force them to do that. They made a choice.
"Why does spam waste your time? Because in a capitalist system it benefits people to flood channels if there is a profit in it. If spammers could not increase their capital by spamming, your time wouldn't be wasted."
Why do robbers rob my house? Because in a capitalist system it benefits people to rob houses if there is a profit in it. If robbers could not increase their capital by robbing, my house wouldn't be robbed.
Now the robber is doing something we (as a society) don't like... But since the mechanisms of capitalism are an underlying cause, we shouldn't hold him responsible?
No. We pass a law against robbing. And my opinion is that there should be laws, guidelines, or regulations concerning spam too, because it causes real world harm... it's the electronic equivalent of dumping unwanted garbage everywhere, and leaving everyone but the perpetrator to cover the costs.
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
Graf one is based on the observation that many /. posts indicate an aversion to the organized political activity needed to thwart the legislation that angers them
/. posts that exhibit the listed attributes.
Graf two is right out of Sociology 101, dealing with alienation and group identification.
Graf three is based on simple reading of many
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
When identification with a community becomes more important to each community member than the goals or shared behaviors of the community, that community is well on the way to becoming an irrelevant cult.
In my limited experience this is the natural evolution of a fringe movement.
To use an example, by the time the masses latch on to the fact that Microsoft's DOS is quite crappy, turns out the evil-empire has already put out a Unix-VMS clone called NT which while far from admirable is not altogether bad.
If you notice, the truly far out thinkers like Linus Torvalds and Miguel de Icaza are half as irrational about Microsoft's accomplishments as the rest of the FSF and other like cultists.
a dogmatic belief that everything the "enemy" says and does is a lie and, therefore, unworthy of a second's thought;
I've seen rational, intelligent grown up people act like children covering their ears when it comes to Microsoft related issues. And somehow they feel proud of their "independent" stance, when all they've done is join a different, perhaps smaller, cult and follow equally blindly.
it seems to me that the original article falls into the class of "troll".....
Do you suppose Edison or John Nash (the person the movie "A beautiful mind" is based on) were called Geeks? Or was there some other derogatory term fabricated to suite the time.
All I can say is that you'd damn well better hope there is always some class of people that others fabrticate some derogatory term for because these others feel inferior to on an intellectual level.
Otherwise we can all go back to living in caves, as apparently some really want to happen in promoting the end of advancement mentality of such focus to have less time in focusing on social grunts and groans.
ttree tree tree goat
What the hell are these "Graf"s you are talking about?
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Sorry. "Graf" is newspaper speak for "paragraph".
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Your example is like saying, "How do you know you won't like jumping off this bridge if you've never tried it?" If you throw a filter in place that allows only those who tolerate MS enough to use their products to be valid critics of MS, you are filtering based on strength of opinion, NOT on what method was used to arrive at the opinion as you claim.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
By assuming that it isn't possible to dislike Microsoft based on reasoned thought (of the same variety that tells you you'd dislike jumping off a bridge), you show your true colors.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.