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Geeks in Rolling Stone
The latest issue of Rolling Stone Magazine has an
article on geeks
written by our own Jon Katz. Jon has never pretended to be
a geek, but his subjects, Jesse & Eric, definitely are. They
both list Slashdot in their bookmarks and, well just read
the article. I think a lot of us will find something in
this article worth reading. Its for a mainstream audience,
but I think its pretty fair.
...or totally intolerant. But then, Katz didn't know what he was looking at, either, so I can't blame you for his inability to explain it to you.
:) ), are loser geeks, and the geeks who run the computer clubs and go to parties and have girlfriends/boyfriends and pursue a healthy active social life are _good_ geeks to be emulated and used as the yardstick.
Apparently Katz wants to have Asperger's syndrome when he grows up.
I'm serious- just like there was the discovery years ago that there were millions of 'ambulatory schizophrenics' walking the streets, you just got a close-up look at the value system of an Asperger's person. At least one of them is, if not both- they probably don't know it because they've found niches that keep them out of the hospitals and homeless shelters by the skin of their teeth- and it's a real condition, a lifelong one with no cure, a weird other world of radically different values and priorities.
Have you ever heard the name Temple Grandin? Temple is an autistic woman and possibly the greatest designer of stockyards and livestock handling architecture the world has ever seen. She has always struggled to simply survive the world- but then on the other hand she has what she herself refers to as the 'Sun workstation' in her head, the mysterious savant-like ability to take a set of design problems, turn it over to her unusual and gifted/hobbled brain, and come out with a solution way better than normal humans could hope to find, somewhat like the 'lightning calculator' prodigies. It's a sort of geek Borg-like synthesis- people like the character Data, who can do remarkable feats of computation and even true creativity- but who are helpless at a dinner party without instructions- and who rebel at always having to be given instructions, because they are not _stupid_, just different- in some ways very different.
Is it any wonder that we retreat to the computer sphere where we can thrive and use our strengths?
Yeah, I did say 'we' for a reason- I live with Asperger's myself. It's not too much of a problem, though it is a disabling condition in most circumstances. I steer away from social interaction- unless it's with people I have something significant in common with, it wears me out absurdly fast, to the point that I develop physical symptoms of stress. I was ordered by a shrink once to go right away to the emergency room of the hospital. Why? I'd been trying to sort of 'fit in with the mainstream', in particular to get willingness to try your regular sort of people-oriented job (rather than the low-pay but geek-oriented jobs I'm doing now). I was a good boy, right up to the point where the shrink informed me the stomach pains that made me sweat and lie awake at night and guzzle Alka-seltzer over was gastric ulcer recurring on me, and that I could be dead in days if I didn't fix whatever it was that was wrong. Then I stopped being the good boy and considered the idea of just being _me_... and yes, I do have some freaky skills, the sort Jon Katz longs for. In particular, I'm right off the chart in particular types of mental modeling, the specific test being one of a set called GATB, in which you see 2D shapes and answer which, of a set of 3D shapes, the 2D shape can be deformed to. I obliterated this test, set a ten year high- and it's typically geeky that I also loved it and wanted to keep doing more of the exercises.
I don't know why I'm going to all this trouble to explain all this. Nobody really cares, least of all me- my life remains the same set of capacities and challenges whether or not you, popular head-of-his-class AC, think I'm a loser or not. In fact, since trying to measure up to your value system damned near literally killed me, I'm pointedly not interested in trading in a life where I can be healthy and accomplish things for a life where I look socially acceptable and 'play well with others' and die in a few years.
I'm only reacting to this notion that, of the nerds and geeks, the reclusive ones, the ones who can't deal with eating right or hygiene (I'm borderline- having a bad, bad hair day, but not overly rancid, thanks
This is not only angering, it is unfair, because historically, large numbers of nerds, geeks and other major contributors to 20th century technology- hell, any technology, ever- have been these people you scorn, geeks without social lives, sometimes without friends, but with brains that can do things like hack on code for 30 hours without rest, or mysteriously arrive at revolutionary ways of doing things.
Sounds like Ubermensch? (btw, you do know who Nietzsche is?) Well, it's more like LOSERmensch, and that changes NOTHING about it. Humans vary, and the geek/nerd is well within the overall spectrum- brings things to society that cannot be simply duplicated by masses of people putting in 9-to-5s and then going off to socialize with their circuits of social obligations- and I for one will not just sit around silently and listen to people who are kind of like me, called losers. I don't see them as losers. I'm as maladjusted as they are- except in my areas of strength, or even savantlike ability.
If you don't like the 'bad name' set by those you associate with, I'd have to suggest that you better get used to it. There's a very clear correlation between certain types of mental illness (defined as 'ill by the standards of normal society) and hacker skills. It's not just about having more time to practice, either- the extreme hacker archetype is _qualitatively_ different from your normal smart guy. There's a whole spectrum going all the way from Joe Regular Dude (who happens to be a damned good coder) to weird personalities who seem to be telnetting their thinking from the planet Neptune, to RMS (just haha-only-serious). Joe Regular _cannot_ do some of the things RMS has done, and probably can't do what the guy from Neptune can do (though Joe's a hell of a lot easier to cope with).
This is not the sociological version of rocket science. This is _obvious_ to anybody who's made the slightest effort to do the research. Anyone asserting that 'shut inside low-hygeine geek losers' are a bad influence that need to be trained to act like humans... is only illustrating their inability to understand the reality of geeks, and the computer subculture, and the human mind itself.
I could log out to post this but I'm damned if I will. I'm speaking for me, others might identify with some of it or not. Clearly some will not. Not my problem- I just refuse to be blackmailed into some expectation that growth for me involves learning to act more like Joe Average, have outside interests, socialize etc. and not be 'a loser'. I rather think that, having put a lot of work into understanding this, that I'll go on being me, thank you- which will continue to be a 'me' many people would consider rather maladjusted, a 'me' which Jon Katz would appear to be blankly awed by (except I've sassed him too much), a 'me' so depersonalised by the impossible, unattainable expectations of society that for years I didn't even feel human at all- and finally, a 'me' I'm beginning to understand and accept- not on moral grounds but the sheer pragmatism of 'what works'. And being a geek, nerd, perhaps even a hacker in ways, works for me, where nothing else did.
Whether or not Katz's geeks consider themselves Asperger's people, their worldviews coincide with my own painfully-acquired one well enough that I don't accept your labels for them at all. They are not 'losers'. They're different than you. Deal with it because you can't change them: it's only fair, they've spent all their lives, as I did, not being able to change people like you.
Flame on: it'll be interesting to see who 'gets it' and who doesn't. Sounds like your mind is already made up, AC.
This is the above mentioned Jesse. I hope you like or at least accept as mundane reality the piece in Rolling Stone about us. A small caveat, it's not about technology much, so if your eyes glaze over when you read anything but manuals, you're in for a glazing...any comments, complaints, bullshit, comradarie, rib-jabbing, leg-pulling, mail-bombing, or plain unmasked hatred you feel inclined to unleash, do it to daileyj@icsp.net
This is Eric from the piece. Hope you like the story, or at least the photographs by Ethan Hill. My e-mail's not in the piece, so here it is. twilegar@icsp.net. The only thing I wish is that Britney Spears was on the cover again :)
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