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Is the Maker Movement Making It Cool For Kids To Be Nerds?
blackbearnh writes "For many adults into technology, childhood was an alienating experience, pigeon-holed as a nerd and relegated to the A/V, Computer or Gaming club in high school. But according to a Christian Science Monitor article that looks at young Makers, the next generation of tech geeks are social and are gaining increasing support from corporate America. Radio Shack is stocking Arduinos, Autodesk bought Instructables, and teens are flocking to local Hackerspaces to learn how to create their own gear. Wired GeekDad David Giancaspro thinks the desire to create things is natural. 'As we've moved further and further away from that, towards what people call "knowledge work," as opposed to producing something physical, that urge is starting to come back,' he says."
Slashdot has used cool twice today, so is officially uncool.
understanding tech is still nerdy
When the masses start flocking to it, it's over.
"True happiness comes from the joy of deeds well done, the zest of creating things new." -- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
While I am a card carrying nerd, my experience was you're only pigeonholed if you let yourself be. While I really wash't any good at sports, I stuck it out riding the bench for 4 years in high school and earned a varsity letter as a result. I had friends who were jocks as well as nerds. It's all about persistency and determination as silent Cal said.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Sorry, won't ever happen. It seems like nerds who grow up to be in the media still project their common teenage fantasy that suddenly the world turns upside down and all the nerds are cool. Hint: the guy hunched over his phone/calculator or whatever and writing programs on it is still and always will be a nerd. But like most of us he's having a good time and doesn't give a shit what label you assign him.
Also I'd love shove the guy who keeps pushing the term "Maker" in a locker.
That's not something I would put in a "positive points" list.
Also, forcing people to register to their damn website, Autodesk or not, is just fucking annoying. Let everyone see the bigger pictures and all the pages.
At some point you have to stop looking for external validation of your personal preferences. "Coolness" doesn't have to be democratic.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
No.
I haven't been in a RSin years. I'll have to check out if they have any Arduinos.
Society decided that nerds were cool, then decided to actually make those nerdy activities cool. They did so by making it more sociable (e.g. hackerspaces) and more socially responsible (e.g. fablabs). These are good things because it means that people are actually playing with technology, sharing the fruits of their labour, and broadening their understanding in many aspects of life.
The old fashioned nerd still exists, but I'm confident that you'll find that they are still outcasts. After all, people find it easier to relate to people who can relate to people than to people who relate to machines.
nice... wait? what? Christian Science Monitor.. dudes.. are you fucking kiddin me?
The whole summary (For many adults into technology, childhood was an alienating experience, pigeon-holed as a nerd and relegated to the A/V, Computer or Gaming club in high school) strikes me as a cliché plot for some random American movie.
I was into science and a fan of computers from a very early age. I was teaching other kids how to use them in the period between the 4th and 6th grade. Yet, I was a very social kid, played outside most of the time with my friends and was never labeled a nerd or a geek.
In all honesty I never experienced this, kids into science and tech were not labeled as nerds, it were the kids playing inside during breaks with magic cards that were.
It's the combination of interests that makes society stop and point out 'nerds' or 'geeks'.
Perhaps people discovering that not everyone can be stereotyped away is making being a "maker" cool. But I am sure the high-school mentality of popular media will fight against us teaching kids they can be whatever they want and have whatever interestes they want.
You are a nerd.
You are a jock.
Certainly nerds are not allowed to like sports, and jocks are not allowed to be engineers.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
If you had a club in school, were you really "alienated"?
I had no such clubs in school. I hung out with the other guy in school who actually knew how to fix a car, or the other guy in school who actually knew King Crimson. I hung out in the public library by myself. Personal Computers showed up just after graduation. I guess I was alienated, but I had such a blast with the 'weirdos' when I got to Uni, that it more than made up for it.
"Cool" for teens will always be warped by marketing. Marketing will always go for the easiest kills, so Cool is always going to center on jocks and holes.
Making something accessible doesn't necessarily make it cool.
Radio shack stocking arduinos doesn't mean much. Does them caring it make it more accessible, I would beg to differ. I personally think Amazon dose make things more accessible
Why behave like a nerd (or a member of any other subculture) and then hope that the culture at large acknowledges and appreciates it? This seems backwards and very self-focused.
Why not give up the subculture behaviors and identification instead? You don't need to give up building things, or tinkering, or being interested in computers, or math, or anything else. Why shouldn't "nerds" try to reach out and understand the rest of the world? And, if you won't, don't expect people to ever think you're "cool".
If you don't respect them, they won't respect you. Nor should they.
This goes for other subcultures too. Be a helpful and good part of society if you want society to treat you well.
Isn't the nature of "coolness" such that other people want to be associated with you in order to raise their social standing?
The "cooler" you are, the more people who want to be associated with you. And the fewer people who can raise your social standing by you associating with them.
I can agree with that. But it's not the same as being "cool".
The folks who enjoy making your lives a Hellmouth don't fucking know the Maker Movement exists.
Seek wealth and power, then outsource their jobs and leave them destitute. Living well is the best revenge, but society has made the effort to deserve sociopaths. No reason not to become one.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
It's about time. I was a nerd in the 60s and suffered some of the predictable ignominies. Now I feel sorry for my peers who have been passed by technology. Unable fully to comprehend what has happened, they are frightened about the future and their place in it.
Have gnu, will travel.
I know i'm going to need my Nomex underwear for this post, but...
1) IME, kids who would be 'nerds' tend to be nerds anyways. It's something that they just can't help.
2) Kids who would not be nerds will pretty much not be nerds. Either they don't have the interest, intelligence, or what. But they'll get into other things instead (not that this is bad, it's just the facts).
2) Kids who are on the fence might be brought in by Make or similar, but this percentage is going to be incredibly low.
3) Right now it is INCREDIBLY COOL to be a 'nerd' or a 'geek'. However, this definition doesn't apply to the kids in #1. The 'new' nerds or geeks aren't really nerds or geeks, just those from #2 that have found a way to apply that label to themselves so that they can do whatever they wanted to do in the first place. I'm talking the cosplay/anime types who play video games as opposed to writing them, buy Macbooks instead of building a computer themselves, and get into Rock Band instead of learning to play a real instrument. There will unfortunately be little to no talk about science, computers, scifi, Make Magazine or any of the hallmark stuff that anyone GenX or older would think of when you say "nerd" or "geek". The terms have completely new meanings.
There are many examples, but y'all get the gist.
do() || do_not();
childhood was an alienating experience, pigeon-holed as a nerd
If you were a *real* nerd, you wouldn't have cared.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both. -Benjamin Franklin
It's the nerds who keep the world working.
Nerds are the one who are not afraid to try out new things.
Nerds are the one who do not shelf their curiosity in a dusty cabinet somewhere.
I know that this whole changing of society to be accepting of homosexuals has sure helped the open source movement. If it wasn't for that Linux users would still be labeled as dirty faggots who take it up the ass for anonymous black men at the local adult movie house.
And never will be. Nerds are unbalanced and socially inept.
You can be smart, tech savvy and geeky as shit and still be cool. Nerds can not be, by definition.
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nerd
Nerd is a term that refers to an intelligent but single-minded person obsessed with a nonsocial hobby or pursuit.[1] Nerds are generally considered to be awkward, shy and/or unattractive by most.[2] Thus, a nerd is often excluded from physical activity and considered a loner by others, or will tend to associate with a small group of like-minded people.
Slashdot used to be news for nerds, now it seems its turned into news for douche bags that'd like to think they are nerds but don't seem to be intelligent enough to know the definition of the word.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Do "Makers' even exist outside of O'Reilly magazine's flogs?
Oh...not that Maker Movement? Huh.
Who's the suiter© trying to make-up cool=nerdy=cool urban lingo? Try not to laugh when he says Makers 'spread their wings'...lulz.
Imagination drew in bold strokes, instantly serving hopes and fears, while knowledge advanced by slow increments...
See above.
I bought it when it came out, then cancelled once they turned into a hand-wavy version of Popular Mechanics.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
I wonder what it says about me when I immediately think of Dune when I hear the word "maker"
What is that, some kind of religion where they worship Shai-Hulud ?
I'm sure being a geek is cool for Silicon Valley kids, but here in the midwest nothing's cooler than football. Videogames seem to be real popular with kids these days, but in my book that doesn't make them 'geeks' in the sense this article is talking about. Playing 8 billion hours of Call of Duty doesn't teach one science. In fact, it doesn't teach anything.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
It used to be that it was more common for people to DIY. In the dark old days, the men fixed their wagons (literally) and women sewed their own clothing.
The "maker movement" is just a regression to the norm. The excursion into mass market consumerism was several generations, so we've forgotten.
Also, by defintion you can't be a nerd if everybody does it; but that topic is covered above.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
All the real nerds were doing circuits before Make and Arduino came along.
</beard>
No nerds still suck
From another post:
Also I'd love to shove the guy who keeps pushing the term "Maker" in a locker.
Agreed. The "Maker movement" is a product of O'Reilly Media, Inc, the people who run overpriced tech conventions. They run the various Maker Faire shows and Make magazine. They seem to be trying to own the do-it-yourself industry. The original article reads like a Maker Faire ad. I've shown at one Maker Faire, and will not do so again. You're unpaid entertainment for a flea market.
Autodesk has a straightforward motivation - they sell pro tools for designing real world stuff, and the more people who know how to use those tools, the more they can sell. They're trying to get kids and amateurs to think like design engineers.
Their big effort in this area is Autodesk 123D, which is a free subset of Autodesk Inventor with a simpler interface. It connects to laser cutters and 3D printers, so you can fabricate the parts you design. It's a useful intro to 3D design, and a way to teach kids the mindset needed to design something with working parts. (That's harder than learning to use the software.)
With more computing power than I had as a kid to blink a LED, then yes, this slashervisment is for you!
I think this kids' parents will soon face a mass lawsuit of some kind for a bogus patent on "making things on your own - with a computer" and have the choice of paying the college fund to an Intellectual Ventures-like patent troll or be processed at the cost of the all the family have and only them they'll understand that their country is so rotten.
If USA can't understand they are going to destroy themselves, better do it fast, so it can't spread too much to the rest of the world. Time for big corporations push the M.A.D. (Mutually Assured Destruction) patent war so we can all watch the decline of science and innovation on USA (and soon EU) for the bad of the world. When you are spending more very hard earned money on lawyers instead of R&D, something is so twisted that is almost beyond repair.
What a destiny to an once admired country for its freedom, incentive to creativity and innovation. Now you can't even create a web site without stepping on 1-click-like patents.
On the the Halloween theme, R.I.P. USA.
Have any of those cool new fasionable nerd-wannabees actually invented something ingeniously useful?
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
Some say that the new Makers are so cool that hip chicks like Andraste are even into them, and say that they want to marry them. Of course, Andraste's hubby is not going to be so happy about this and it will surely end badly for someone.
Is the Maker Movement Making [I]it Cool [F]for Kids [T]to [B]be Nerds?
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[ shamelessly clipped from wikipedia entry on Rhodes Scholarship ]:
Rhodes' legacy specified four standards by which applicants were to be judged:
Literary and scholastic attainments;
Energy to use one's talents to the fullest, as exemplified by fondness for and success in sports;
Truth, courage, devotion to duty, sympathy for and protection of the weak, kindliness, unselfishness and fellowship;
Moral force of character and instincts to lead, and to take an interest in one's fellow beings.
----
'nuff said
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
This "Maker" movement is a bunch of marketing crap cooked up by some aging "cyberpunks" that wanted to sell magazines while building stuff in the garage with their kids. That's fine but this so called "Maker" scene existed long before and will long after all this Hooray-for-me-arduino-blog-kinect-hack-flavor-of-the-month stuff fades away.
"Make" is to DIY culture as "Word" is to writing.
The bigger question is why the need to typecast people into groups. This is a unique American phenomenon, where kids replicate racist structures from society into a cast system that doesn't quite exist in any other country in the world.
I mean, in every school in the world there are popular girls, sports types, ethnic groups, studious people, alternative people, but they generally mingle and can be seen partaking in various activities. Sure a goth is likelier to hang out with another goth, but you can still talk to them.
Not in the American system, where groups are segregated and mingling is frown upon by all sides.
I only vaguely remember that time, but IIRC according to Norbert's Rules of Adolescence, being a "nerd" pretty much precludes being "cool" and vice versa.
So if the kids at makerspace are cool, then they are not nerds.
I have always felt this same cognitive dissonance with regard to "comic book stores". I think that comic books were only truly "nerdy" when you had to buy them from the newsstand/drugstore in front of "normal people".
IMHO, it ain't nerdy unless it's embarrassing.
If you are "incredibly cool", then by definition you are not a nerd. Sending text messages on a smartphone or posting to facebook certainly does not make a nerd. Back in 1990, yes, if you were sending text messages (using "talk" on a unix system), you were a nerd. In 2011, sending text messages is as mainstream as listening to Lady Gaga (not to mention just as easy).
Bottom line: nerds enjoy stuff that's difficult and academic -- stuff that other people can't or won't do. Stuff that's difficult and academic will never be enjoyable with the mainstream crowd. The very reason they have finally come to love technology is that it's become so easy a toddler can do it -- not because they have grown to love stuff that's difficult and academic.
But our kids (assuming we have them) are going to have a hard time of it too.
The world doesn't advance fast enough. Our kids are probably going to be bright,
talented, and kind - and their schools will chew them up and spit them out.
There's nothing anyone can do to change this scenario.
In the dark old days, the men fixed their wagons (literally) and women sewed their own clothing.
In the dark old days, they didn't have state-backed DRM to keep people from making things. Nowadays, we have computing appliances that won't run anything without the cryptographic digital signature of the appliance's manufacturer. This has been the norm in video gaming since 1985 with the NES lockout chip, and some pundits are even predicting a "post-PC era" where this becomes the norm even for "work" computing.
Why in the fucking hell is ANYONE linking to Christian Science anything? These people are fucking Evil!!
We have a short period every decade where its cool to be Geek and rich. Then it fades back into mediocrity. Doesnt bother me. I've survived multiple cycles of this.
Admitting you don't know something is admirable. Not knowing can be remedied. It is a lot better than pretending you know something when you don't.
Being actually proud of not knowing something is unfathomable to me. Nobody goes around boasting they can't read, or don't know how to use flush toilets. I don't know whether to pity them or despise them or both.
Pride in ignorance is part of the basis of anti-intellectualism and the backlash against science. There's a feeling of insecurity that comes from confronting the fact that other people know a lot more more than you do about how the world works, and a knee-jerk reaction to dismiss such people as elitists, or claim that the products of generations of research are worth no more than the knowledge and beliefs they possess. Some people can't tolerate the feeling of being inferior to someone else (and I can relate to that, personally) and respond by trying to boost themselves up while dragging others down.
The process of boosting themselves up often doesn't involve real self-improvement, rather just an assertion that they are good enough already. Hence, pride in ignorance.
Bow-ties are cool.
If all you want is a blinking LED with minimum power consumption or external parts count, the simplest solution was the LM3909, from National Semiconductor. The only external component needed for the simplest applications was a single capacitor (value sets the flash rate), and the thing could flash a single red LED for a year or more from a single AA battery.
Unfortunately, the powers that be at National decided to discontinue it several years ago.
Remember "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"? Help make it a reality again! http://soylentnews.org
THAT is why I will never use an iPhone or anything else Apple produces. A culture that celebrates ignorance is contemptible. A person who wears technical incompetence like a medal of honour is a moron.
My dad is hopeless with computers, but he's an artist with an arc welder. When I was a young man it was obvious to me that he was quietly disappointed with my incompetence at welding. I wasn't proud of it; I practised till I was merely not very good. Years later, I see dad feeling incompetent with his computer and I tell him "Forgive me if I sometimes sound exasperated. I'm sure you feel the same way watching me butcher a welding job."
You can't be good at everything, but a lack of skill is never commendable.
Answer: No.
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Lots of posts in this thread aren't getting what Nerd means. It does NOT mean smart or expert. It means smart and expert to/with the exclusion of social skills. If you're grandpa was a gear head, he was a gear head, not a car nerd. To be a car nerd would be either that he chose to learn about cars instead of girls and friends (beyond other nerds).
Geekdom is something else.
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Can we PLEASE let the question headline meme die the painful death it deserves?
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I, like many readers, was part of the "geek" crew growing up.... I do not know what it was.. I was learning html when I was 12 years old(Back in the days of 14.4k and Prodigy/CompuServe) I was going to book fairs to buy college chemistry books to learn from at the age of 14... Very strange... But honest to God, I am glad it happened. I am now a successful 26 year old, with a very promising career. I look back at all the "popular" kids in high school, and they are 40-60 pounds heavier and have 3+ kids...... HAWT!!!!!!! #KarmasaBITCH GO GEEKS! BUILD, HACK, CONQUER!!!
THAT is why I will never use an iPhone or anything else Apple produces. A culture that celebrates ignorance is contemptible. A person who wears technical incompetence like a medal of honour is a moron.
My dad is hopeless with computers, but he's an artist with an arc welder. When I was a young man it was obvious to me that he was quietly disappointed with my incompetence at welding. I wasn't proud of it; I practised till I was merely not very good. Years later, I see dad feeling incompetent with his computer and I tell him "Forgive me if I sometimes sound exasperated. I'm sure you feel the same way watching me butcher a welding job."
You can't be good at everything, but a lack of skill is never commendable.
It was that way between me and my father with math. He was also always better with computers than me as well. So yeah, I was a continuous source of exasperation.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
There's a feeling of insecurity that comes from confronting the fact that other people know a lot more more than you do about how the world works
Yep. And the proper geek reaction to that is to perceive said individuals as a. worthy of knowing and b. having useful knowledge or ideas that should be absorbed.
That is how to look at someone who maintains knowledge or skills that are outside or beyond your own. Fear and derision are the province of truly tiny minds, regardless of their native intelligence. The sad thing is, most people are capable of a lot more than that for which they give themselves credit.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.