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John Hodgman On the Coming Geek Culture
An anonymous reader writes "Famous writer and minor television personality John Hodgman posits the end of the culture of Jockdom in favor of a cultural reverence for engineers, scientists and Slashdot readers: 'Jockdom is very noble. It's not deliberative. It's certainly the best way to win wars. It's the best way to motivate teams of people to fulfill a goal — not just war, but getting things done. The most important way to motivate a factory floor. But as you know, we're not as much of a manufacturing society as we were before. China and other big industrial nations are rewarding their nerds and technicians rather than creating a culture that makes fun of them — it would be wise for us to embrace the book-smart as much as our culture has traditionally embraced the street-smart, the jock-smart. I'm not saying nerds must have their revenge; I'm just saying the time for wedgies is at an end.'"
I, for one, welcome myself as one of our new overlords.
Isn't that the guy who played spider-man in those movies???
Then you wouldn't be pegged with (and the associated stigmas) of a certain stereotype.
I was heavy into science in high school, as well as sports and other extra-curricular activities. I never had a problem with any group of people.
Gone!
I don't necessarily think "jockdom" is the best way to win wars. Military history is full of examples of headstrong, impulsive leaders losing while the soft spoken, thoughtful (as in deliberative), strategic leader winning. Sun Tzu, Machiavelli, Marcus Aurelius, don't seem to me as typical 'jocks'.
If the previous president is any indication, jocks are more likely to start wars, for inane reasons, and either lose or not finish the job. Not that I think of Bush as a jock, but he certainly wasn't a nerd/geek. There should probably be three categories, 'jock','nerd','loser/lamer'
Pffft, who's gonna listen to this pathetic, whinging, scrawny little dweeb?
And since we live in the real world, people that combine intelligence with street smarts will always be the most valuable. Not just in war, but in any endeavor that requires getting a group of mad apes to come together.
That being said, I think the jock thing is a little overblown. Plenty of near-autistic nerds with no social skills are getting paid just fine, despite our supposed jockocracy and out societies baffling refusal to put us at the center of the universe.
The dichotomy between nerds and jocks is a false one, and it has been for some time. The stereotypes assert that "jocks" who are socially active, athletic, and attractive must not have any interest in technology, be smart, or value intellectual pursuits. Likewise, "nerds" who are smart and dedicated to learning must be slobs, socially awkward, and unattractive. This hasn't been the case at any time in the last decade or so that I've been paying attention. Some of the smartest and most academically successful people at my high school, who went on to attend highly prestigious universities, some to study science and engineering, were also athletic, social, attractive people. Many of the socially awkward nerds were not smart and did not value learning. In college, a significant percentage of my incredibly smart engineering colleagues had been high school football stars, loved to party, and were quite successful in relationships.
Now that I'm in law school, it's clear that my fellow students value intelligence (including technical knowledge) right along with social prowess and appearance. The entire spectrum of personal attributes is not only respected, but expected in these circles. I believe this has been the norm among high-performing, successful people for quite some time now - it's not even clear that the jock-nerd dichotomy every really existed the way it is portrayed. As far as I can tell, the real divide has everything to do with social skills and nothing to do with intelligence.
I am a geek attorney, but not your geek attorney unless you've already retained me. This is not legal advice.
Women, despite outnumbering men, have been unable to achieve equality in macho culture despite at least 100 years of effort. No big reason to think that nerds will do any better.
From the article:
'My town is the best because the incredibly wealthy owners decided to keep the team for now.' Or, 'My political team is the best because it was my dad's and they best stoke my primitive fears,' as opposed to 'They have the best policies for me and my family.'
Required reading. In a couple of short sentences, he exposes and decodes the core cultural aberration of the false spectacle - the pseudo-life - in which people imagine themselves.
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
While Hodgeman may be a comedian by trade, he has a great point. Though, where I live (Portland Oregon) the numbers of Geeks-to-non-Geeks is shoring up over time. In fact, I think Portland was recently declared the 3rd most geek-friendly place in the world.
Truth is, the geek inherited the earth long ago. They just need to rise up and grow a backbone. It can be done. Right? Anyone? Bueler?
Parmasean Cheese. It's what's for dinner.
Our culture does not respect those whose labor directly produces wealth. In fact, it doesn't even have a clue about how to become wealthy and stay wealthy now. The very fact that companies look at their domestic wealth-producing workers and think "these guys are optional" rather than going to H.R., middle management, etc. for budget cuts is proof of that.
Hodgman ... played minor parts in Tina Fey's Baby Mama, Ricky Gervais' The Invention of Lying and Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Battlestar Galactica.
No wonder the ending of BSG was so out there. Too many chefs spoil the stew.
Putting moderation advice in your
I also have a problem with this guy thinking he's clever by speaking on behalf of nerds like he's a nerd prophet. Dos preguntas: 1) Does this guy think that because he wears glasses that he is automatically a nerd? 2) If he is a nerd, who gave him the power to speak for anyone else that claims to be a nerd?
It's certainly the best way to win wars.
Jockdom is no longer the best way to win wars... Look at Iraq and Afganistan- we're slowly moving away from big ass bombs to smarter, more humanitarian ways of winning a series of wars that have more to do with culture and education than with fighting. Jocks-schmocks!
I'm a nerd, enjoy math and computer science and worked hard at it. I have a job that pays really well compared to most people. I come in and go when I want and am responsible for myself. Most people I know in this field have similar lifestyles. I don't see how I'm being cheated or not rewarded.
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
or so the expression goes. And it is absolutely 100% true. It basically comes down to this: those with excellent social skills will have far more opportunities in life than those with weak social skills. Jockdom tends to develop the social skills, Geekdom, not so much. This is why jocks seem to always be doing well for themselves, even when they're not the smartest, or even not smart at all.
I'd love to be wrong. But I don't think I am.
It's sad to see middle-aged men still talking about stuff that happened to them in high school. I know John Hodgman is hardly serious, but the more I know about the USA the more it sounds like a country of 17-year old self-claimed losers who get publicly humiliated on a daily basis by having their underpants pulled up.
Seriously, it's sad to see grown men still dragging along their high school complexes. Jocks and nerds? Grow the fuck out of it. Not only must every single god damn American TV show plot that's centred around males at school must be about so-called losers who get humiliated by big mean guys and mean "popular girls", on top of that you have a very significant portion of the American adult population who must completely identify and go out of their way to fit the stereotypes, from reading children's comic books about superior men in tight pants who avenge anyone by kicking the arse of the big mean guys (yes, so-called losers enjoy escapism by means of reading about a superior man who kicks all the arse they never had the balls to kick themselves) to being pansies who'll get pushed around by their wife as if they were still 12 and that the chick was their mom, probably because they feel that so-called losers don't need to grow some balls and become a man, so they forever remain whiny overgrown teenagers who play with Star Wars figurines and get flashbacks of having their underpants pulled up. If you're gonna play something that involves dungeons and you're over 20, it'd better involve gags and leather restraints.
As an outsider, watching that shit is getting increasingly painful. We don't even have a word for wedgie cause no one gets their underpants pulled up in France, except maybe girls with G-strings that stick out of their pants, so that's hard to relate to your neurosis. It's like your entire culture and civilisation revolves around men with complexes who can't grow out of their teenager bullshit. Look at movies. How many of them are about a loser hero any other loser can relate to and who becomes a loser+ by staying a loser so you can still relate but in the process accomplishing something great? As in "big jewy loser who never kissed a girl and plays WoW goes through a bunch of adventures and in the end he kisses a hot chick whom he thought was "out of his league", whatever the fuck that means". Or "divorced middle-aged loser with a crappy job saves the world and gets with a hot woman". Sometimes it seems like you ALL must think of yourselves as loser, one way or another. That's pathetic.
You just got troll'd!
Unfortunately for the geek, most chicks are still evolutionarily wired to look for the big, broad-shouldered types to mate with.
And as far as population and evolution go: he who gets the most tail, wins.
you could preserve american labor, and someone else would use cheaper overseas labor. then american consumers would buy that cheaper product of which nothing, not even company headquarters, gets a cut of that profit. then the next step is protectionism, where you insist everyone buy more expensive american made goods. then people buy far less, or they buy black market goods, because patriotism does not magically put money into your bank account, and you still need to buy a refrigerator. meanwhile, the rest of the world enjoys better products at cheaper prices while the american economy stagnates and shrinks, cut off from the rest of the world because of protectionism
i'm sorry, but in the interest of what is best for the united states, fuck american labor. the industrial age is over, let china pollute itself rather than the usa. and unions seem less like their ancestors, out to protect american labor from predatory management, and more like the new predator: upper middle class incomes at the expense of everyone else, including the health of the company, and the country
goodbye GM, goodbye industrial dinosaurs, good fucking riddance. if that means we are a poorer country for it, fine, no problem. as if the industrial age defines what is best for us, or even the only model for wealth creation possible. no, your lament at the decline of american labor only means that you don't know any better, not that there isn't anything better than what you have unilaterally decided is the come-all be-all of existence. you think the industrial model is only thing that defines wealth creation, and for some reason is fixed in your mind as a golden age, and all that comes after is somehow magically inferior. maybe its superior, and you simply don't see that. superior not in terms of the economic imperialism of past ages, but superior in simple quality of life
japan is coping with ecnomic decline to a far greater extent than the usa, and for a lot longer (since their economy stagnated in 1990). and maybe it means the japanese aren't seen as ubereconomic imperial masters any more, but maybe it also means less salarymen are having heart attacks and that the japanese have a more mellow, easier and happier life. the europeans have months of vacation time and generous social safety nets. so what exactly should we be fighting to retain in your mind? are we at economic war with the world?
fuck your fetishization of the industrial age as all we should aspire to. welcome the poorer, more mellower american age. time to step off the world stage as its master, and fuck you to those of you who think we need to stay in that role for some reason
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I need to learn something today and (sadly) lately the only place where I've been able to learn new things or realize that my assumptions are wrong is /.
You erred in assuming that you could learning anything insightful from a dialogue using loaded terms like nerd and jock. Everyone here has slightly (or radically) different definitions of the words. For example, I've never heard of jocks being smart and industrious, while nerds were smart and lazy. Furthermore, most people here self-identify as nerds, and a smaller majority despise jocks, so the discussion will be incredibly lopsided. The only way to win is not to post.
If you're a geek and not getting laid, then listen closely because you should be.
1. Popular culture lies. Dumb, muscle bound meat heads and frat-boys don't get the girl.
2. The feature in men that women are most attracted to: intelligence.
3. Studies show that intelligent men, over the course of their life, get to have more sex, more regularly than those who are less intelligent.
If your a geek and don't think you can get a girl, you're wrong. All those popped-collared frat boys want you to think you aren't going to be successful because, if the truth got out, THEY would never get laid. So instead of trying, you sit home and play WoW.
If you don't believe me consider this (proposed by a evolutionary biologist): women are beautiful, men are ugly. Agreed? OK. Therefore, men must be choosing mates based on looks (that's why women get more beautiful every generation) and women must be choosing mates based on other features (intelligence).
The new model of human personality http://bit.ly/L1iM5 suggests that jocks would tend to be high in extraversion and low in agreeableness; whereas nerds would be low in extraversion and high in agreeableness. CEO's, political leaders and pro athletes tend toward the jock version. So if the geeks want to rule, they (ahem, I ) have to create a system that pushes power toward modes of action and decision-making that favor intelligence and agreeableness over bluster and force. Open source government, anyone?
From the article: 'My town is the best because the incredibly wealthy owners decided to keep the team for now.' Or, 'My political team is the best because it was my dad's and they best stoke my primitive fears,' as opposed to 'They have the best policies for me and my family.'
Required reading. In a couple of short sentences, he exposes and decodes the core cultural aberration of the false spectacle - the pseudo-life - in which people imagine themselves.
*Laugh* - Life is pseudo-life. About 99% of what I do is an escape from reality really. But what is reality, sit there and do nothing but stare at a wall and you're in reality?
:).
Presumably being a geek, you play video games right? Or have played D&D? Or like movies? Or dream?
The first 2 examples you gave have nothing to do with "pseudo-life", they just have to do with someone making presumably poor decisions based on emotion rather than logic. But if their decision brings them a sense of happiness (which is all success or happiness really is, whatever it's defined as for you, maybe it's more important to them that their local team wins than them having good school systems), was it really the illogical decision? In your set of logic, yes, in their scope maybe not?
Ahh, we could spin on this for hours. There's no right or wrong answer in politics and societal norms, which is what this is really about.
That said, being a geek, I hope we get more respect, paid more and are considered more attractive (although I seem to get a lot of respect from people now, that has never been a huge issue really?) and I think the author has some good points.
I just disagree with your sentiment about "pseudo-life"
In a couple of short sentences, I've decoded your political biases too. You do understand that the whole political liberalism vs conservatism argument actually has merit and is worth debate, once you throw out the extreme religious and communist (and other) wingnuts, right? To characterize that most people's political beliefs (at least, those that oppose you) are based on something false because you fail to see the merit of their ideas is silly. Liberal views have merit: there are obvious benefits to both society and the individual if we take care of each other through a public system. Conservative views also have merit: there are obvious benefits to both society and the individual by rewarding those who are the most productive to our economy, and not allowing large percentages of the population to sleepwalk through life on welfare sucking the life out of the country. Finding the right balance is what the political process is all about. Claiming your political "foes" only hold their beliefs due to primitive fears is counter-productive.
11*43+456^2
is still practiced by the usa. protectionism is practiced by every single country. protectionism will always be practiced, and used as a threat, regardless of any trade treaty signed by anyone
but SIGNIFICANT protectionism, which most people mean when they talk about the issue, of the kind that would actually make a dent in the flow of jobs overseas, would cripple the american economy, in all sorts of ways, not all of which having to do with job protectionism or consumer behavior. ti woudl cripple the american economy to a greater degree than anything you could possibly gain by retaining american jobs in the industrial sector
you do understand that right?
and please enough with the slave labor propaganda. no american company is selling products made with slave labor. and if they are, they are exposed, shamed, and switch manufacturers. there are watchgroups where all they do is look for these kinds of abuses. the indonesian sweat shops making nike sneakers made for good antiglobalism propaganda in 1998. but its 2009, and nike and anyone else in business is making damn sure they don't run into that kind of business-killing bad PR ever again
now if you want to talk about a genuine issue, talk about environmental degradation. thats real. basically, cheap chinese made products are giving chinese people cancer due to china's complete lack of giving a shit about their abuse of their own environment
but do you really think protectionism is the way to address that?
"So what is more important? That we have consumer goods as cheaply as possible, or that we live our values as a nation?"
that we have consumers goods as cheaply as possible. duh
you yourself probably went to buy something at walmart after writing that highminded but empty appeal. plenty of people will agree with you, pay you lip service, it sounds grand: principles over cheap plastic crap. but absolutely no one will put that into practice. when you are standing in the store, and you have to buy that microwave, the $150 dollar one is not going to be bought. the $50 dollar one is. that $100 is worth a hell of a lot more to you than empty highmindedness
unless you are upper middle class or rich and actually have the disposable income to put your words into action. for everyone else scraping by, the vast majority of us: get real
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
'My political team is the best because it was my dad's and they best stoke my primitive fears,' as opposed to 'They have the best policies for me and my family.'
That reminds me of an old joke:
Q: "Why are you a republican?"
A: "Well, because my father was a republican, and my father's father was a republican."
Q: "What if your father was a horse thief, and your father's father was a horse thief?"
A: "Well, then I'd probably be a democrat."
haw haw /registered independent
As far as I've heard and experienced, the whole "nerd" stigma is an entirely American concept. There aren't really any such thing as "nerds" in Russian or Asian schools; some kids get better grades than others, but they all play football ("soccer") together or climb mountains or whatever. Would anyone in the international community care to elaborate?
I spent about 4 years growing up in Thailand during my childhood and went to an international school. So my personal sampling is skewed. I suppose we did make fun of kids with "teh ghey", but that eventually wore off once we realized how popular they were with the girls.
On returning to the US in 8th grade, the thing that got me the most was that no one played... back East we'd chomp down our lunches in 5 minutes and run out to spend the rest of our break time playing "balloon" or "rabbit" or "tee" or some other form form of zombie / team tag. The only form of physical activity was excruciatingly over-organized team sports with lots of rules and very brief bursts of activity followed by protracted yelling and arguments... more of a game for the enjoyment of politicians and lawyers if you ask me.
Anyway, other countries do have a lot more respect for education and teachers as a profession. Here they're treated more like some form of social worker, maybe marginally higher than street sweepers or bus drivers. Although the same thing appears to be happening to medical doctors now (back when I was growing up in Asia, a doctor was about the best thing a kid could grow up to be... so I was actually kinda surprised to find a lot of my childhood friends growing up to be computer programmers :P ).
WWI: the tank broke the stalemate in the fields, although without it the allies would have eventually ground the Germans down (at a much higher cost though). Plus all the boring logistics stuff like convoys, canned food, etc.
WWII: the atomic bomb, the 4 engine bomber (delivery system of other weapons such as fire bombs used to level many of Germany and Japan's major cities), radar, radar jamming, navigation aids for bombing like Oboe, statistical analysis of what worked and what didn't work in the war of the Atlantic (aka the best way to kill U-boats) oh and a code breaking effort by the allies that broke Enigma (German rotor machine) and Purple (Japanese rotor machine) allowing the Allies to read enemy message traffic in near real time in some cases. The guys like Patton definitely get a lot of credit in the media/text books but it's geeks like Turing that really kicked ass.
Post WWII conflicts: many of the stalemated conflicts could be more properly termed police actions (especially in some cases as war was not declared) and in many cases you'll see a combination off stagnation/misunderstanding of the enemies real intentions/motivations has lead to serious messes.
I highly doubt any of this nonsense is even close to reality. Here in "Real Life" we have gone from Shakespeare, Plato, Bach, Dorvak, Doyle, Poe, Shelly, and other great literary and cultural wonders to Tila Tequila and reality TV.
Here in "Real Life" the rewarding of the lazy, unproductive, immoral, self destructive, and intolerant has only accelerated in the last 30 years.
Our 'assaletes' are substance abusing, spouse abusing, liars. Our politicians are corrupt. Our Scientists are too busy pandering and tailoring research to meet grant requirments and political agendas, and our businesses are too busy keeping the contemporary corporate ponzi scheme alfoat to generate any real wealth.
Between being moral bankrupt, greedy, dihonsest, and hypocritical this Geek veneration smells like more B as in B, S as in S.
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
I hate to say it, but there is no coming shift to geek culture. There simply are not enough geeks compared to "normal people." Geeks don't have the spending power or sheer numbers to really matter. While geeks might have been on the cutting edge at one point, things like the internet, instant messaging, e-mail, social media didn't really start to matter until they started to appeal to more people besides a small niche population.
While geeks may be some of the driving forces behind some of these advancements, only a few of them actually reap the rewards. Case in point, Twitter has gone mainstream. But who has the largest following? Ashton Kutcher.
I just spent some time trying to track a gift down for my wife. In the search results, I came across a forum for handbags/purses. I've seen all sorts of forums in the past: Computers, DVDs, Anime, Cars, Sports, etc, but this was the first time I came across a forum like that. The ladies on that forum are not shifting to geek culture, they're just using new tools to communicate with others of similar interests in new ways.
If all you have are silver bullets, everything looks like a werewolf.
The terms liberal and conservative have been destroyed as meaningful terms. This is somewhat because of pundits abusing the terms, but also with the fact that political ideas are more complex than a spectrum with absolute endpoints. Plus, people can be economically conservative but socially liberal and all various combinations. So assigning them a single value only confuses things.
Describing someone's beliefs as "conservative" should convey as much meaning as calling them "red" or "tall"
A guy's hitchhiking, looking for work in the Great Depression. A big car slows down, and the driver yells at him, "Who are you for in the election?" The guy answers, "Roosevelt!" and the big car peels off and splatters him with gravel. After a little more of this, the guy finally realizes that only rich Republicans have cars and the money to buy gas. So when a fancy sports car slows down to ask the same question, he replies, "Hoover!" The pretty rich girl lets him in, and he can't help noticing that her skirt is way up her thighs. So he says, "For godsakes, lady, pull your skirt down. I've only been a Republican for five minutes, and already I feel like f**king somebody.
Manufacturing of all things, including food, is also becoming increasingly *automated*, and is nothing to be nostalgic about. Even without molecular manufacturing (nanotechnology), this trend of accelerating (in)human productivity will mean that fewer and fewer warm bodies are actually NEEDED to engineer and produce most of the necessities and luxuries of modern life, and yet everybody is still expected to somehow earn their (should-be-easier) living, doing... something... anything else.
The day is fast approaching when we'll *have* to solve the unequal DISTRIBUTION problem, as you mentioned. Either the fruits of increasingly automated production will be fairly redistributed (oh noes: soshulism), or the fortunate few who hoard the resources and means of production will find the "barbarians" at their gates.
An economy of abundance isn't that far off - the next boom after the current recession's bust, in all likelihood. Green energy is part of it.
The solution is *better* socialism, and not more of the old dog eat dog bullshit. What we need is the systemic intelligence and compassion to DISTRIBUTE a sustainable BASIC living to EVERYONE, which still preserves incentives to try to better yourself and society above your baseline by being exceptional. In the U.S., at least, this idea is known as the Basic Income Guarantee (BIG), which quite a few nobel laureates have advocated for in vain thus far...
Power to the Peaceful