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Geeks vs. Nerds
alanh writes "Last week, the News and Observer from the RTP area of NC had this article about the modern usage of the words "Geek" and "Nerd." " Typical piece about the ascendancy of "geeks" and "nerds". However, an interesting question: How do you view the difference between the two words? Or do they mean the same thing?
Nerds post second & think they're first...
"You can't have a geek without a "EE" (Electrical Engineering degree)
IEEE Spectrum has a very nice section about interesting words that show up in the electrical engineering discipline. I remember reading an article discussing the etymology of the word "nerd" in a past issue, perhaps a couple of years ago. It suggested that the word probably originated at MIT and was a derivative of "knurd". Some people thought that the word was first coined as "knurd" since it was the reverse of "drunk", hence somebody who does not drink and party. I don't remember the details, but it was very entertaining and informative.
Any ideas/knowledge about the origins of these two words "geek" and "nerd"??
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There's power in co-opting a negatively-tainted word and turning it into a positive word. Queer and Nigger are both words that are, in the appropriate peer group, used as power words.
Unfortunately, I can't think of other examples. If you can, contribute some; it'll be interesting and maybe enlightening.
My own resume uses "Professional Geek" as one heading. I take pride in the knowledge I have. I think all geeks should.
First thing we need is a slogan as powerful and funny as the "We're queer, we're here and we're going shopping!" one...
"We're geeks, we're..." ??
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Or a dweeb...
The most important differences are as follows:
Geek: Thinks Milli Vanilli were pretty cool, scandal or not.
Nerd: Did the spectral analysis on their voices to determine lip-synching well before the press announcement.
Geek: Has 3 friends and trouble meeting new people.
Nerd: Has 3 friends, but recyles through the use of role playing games and secret code names, bringing the total to 27.
Geek: Will be at home come the new millenium.
Nerd: Did the math to figure out the new millenium starts 2001, will be at home for both.
Hotnutz.com
Strange. I've always placed "geek" as being better than "nerd"...
In my interpretation:
Geeks have broad general knowledge... just enough to be dangerous in almost anything, and enough to actually be quite competent in many areas.
Nerds have deep, specific knowledge... enough to do anything that can be done in their specialty, and not particularly capable of applying that knowledge in other fields.
Geeks obsess over everything techie.
Nerds obsess over one thing to the exclusion of everything else.
You can be a photography geek, an audio geek, a computer geek, a bike geek. A geek that's geeky about one thing is probably geeky about half a dozen completely unrelated other things.
You can be a photography nerd, but it's probably more at the print development stage than the picking a lense stage. You can be an audio nerd, but it's probably more at the building the amp than creating the best sound environment level. You can be a computer nerd, but it's probably more at the writing a one-off specialized integrated database level than the system tweaking level.
Is your interpretation different? Howso?
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A nerd is someone who is fascinated by everything except how to dress.
Let's call the whole thing off.
Honestly, what's in a name. Weather a moniker intimates respect or contempt has little to do with the word, and more to do with the associated stereotype. For example if you called someone discriminating today, it would probably be a negative comment. Fifty years ago it would have been a compliment. The deal is that people who are part of that steroetype are suddenly suceeding in buisness, and clearly are controling the means of communication for the next years.
Like in the whole Littletown media debacle, or many others, terms like Nerd, Geek, Hacker, Cracker, Phreaker, or Goth are used by people who don't have any idea of what they are describing. Perhaps the issue here is that noone can agree on what a nerd is or weather nerd or geek is preferable is up in the air.
To put this in perspective, I'm a foreigner in the us, and in my few years here I've observed the transition from handicapped to disabled as a "euphemism" for people with physical difficulties. Now, I suppose they were originally referred to as Cripples which is now considerd a relatively ugly word, but cripple and cripple are still acceptable.
What is true however, is that the term is considered a perjorative by those who are distant from the issues, the ones that don't know who or what is going on. I don't think that Nigger originally referred to black er african american persons, but something along the lines of greedy, selfish, lazy, self-serving persons.
The terms nerd and geek are used by the same sort of people who associated the littletown incident with goths, but instead of people who wear black, they usually refer to people who are intelectually inclined, and may have poor grooming habits.
A geek, at least last time I thought about these things is a freaky person, someone who might bite heads off chickens, someone who sticks out of social situations in a big way. The term geek has been applied to people who aren't interested in computers, or smart enought o piss a whole in the snow if someone else helps them aim. Nerds on the other hand are people who are poorly groomed, socially simpleminded, and academically inclined.
I suppose that all has changed a whole lot in the last five years. Any sort of choice that you make isn;t going to affect the people around you a whole lot, since they have either made a distinction themselves already, or have no idea what the difference is.
A geek is someone that not only knows the theory and facts of a subject, but can USE them effectively to do something that has meaning in the real world.
Geek is a term I call someone I respect in a given field. Nerd is generally a term for someone who is smart, but lacks that needed clue. Nerds are smart but annoying to geeks, but can be turned into geeks with enough self-improvement.
Trivia buffs are nerds, Edison and Einstein were geeks.
A college degree seems to have the highest chances of turning a nerd into a geek. This is especially true of those who live away from home and on campus, where socialization with people in other fields can take place - something nerds lack.
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
'Geek' has become an almost positive term: smart, rich (silicon valley types), if on the dorky side. 'Nerd' is still almost wholly negative.
/. several years back a comment on the distinction between geek and nerd, and I remember that the difference in meaning was much less clear then than it is now.
I think the interesting question is, how did things turn out this way? It seems to be a very recent distinction: I remember posting (anonymously) on
It seems that it could have gone either way: we needed a term with a positive connotation and a term with a negative connotation, so people just made an arbitrary choice.
nerd n.
1. [mainstream slang] Pejorative applied to anyone with an above-average IQ and
few gifts at small talk and ordinary social rituals. 2. [jargon] Term of praise applied
(in conscious ironic reference to sense 1) to someone who knows what's really
important and interesting and doesn't care to be distracted by trivial chatter and silly
status games. Compare the two senses of computer geek.
The word itself appears to derive from the lines "And then, just to show them, I'll
sail to Ka-Troo / And Bring Back an It-Kutch, a Preep and a Proo, / A Nerkle, a
Nerd, and a Seersucker, too!" in the Dr. Seuss book "If I Ran the Zoo" (1950).
(The spellings `nurd' and `gnurd' also used to be current at MIT.) How it developed
its mainstream meaning is unclear, but sense 1 seems to have entered mass culture
in the early 1970s (there are reports that in the mid-1960s it meant roughly
"annoying misfit" without the connotation of intelligence).
An IEEE Spectrum article (4/95, page 16) once derived `nerd' in its variant form
`knurd' from the word `drunk' backwards, but this bears all the hallmarks of a
bogus folk etymology.
Hackers developed sense 2 in self-defense perhaps ten years later, and some actually
wear "Nerd Pride" buttons, only half as a joke. At MIT one can find not only
buttons but (what else?) pocket protectors bearing the slogan and the MIT seal.
computer geek n.
1. One who eats (computer) bugs for a living. One who fulfills all the dreariest
negative stereotypes about hackers: an asocial, malodorous, pasty-faced
monomaniac with all the personality of a cheese grater. Cannot be used by outsiders
without implied insult to all hackers; compare black-on-black vs. white-on-black
usage of `nigger'. A computer geek may be either a fundamentally clueless
individual or a proto-hacker in larval stage. Also called `turbo nerd', `turbo geek'.
See also propeller head, clustergeeking, geek out, wannabee, terminal junkie,
spod, weenie. 2. Some self-described computer geeks use this term in a positive
sense and protest sense 1 (this seems to have been a post-1990 development). For
one such argument, see http://samsara.circus.com/~omni/geek.html. See also geek
code.
This topic is so controversial I'm surprised there's not a poll to go with it.
:)
In fact, I think that there should be a poll, as all good geeks/nerds know that the only way to prove their point of view is right is to win in a slashdot poll. As Homer said, "The winner will be showered with gifts, and the loser will be booed until my throat is sore."
I'm giving it a day before the time-honoured "Which do you prefer, geek or nerd?" poll comes up... anyone care to see if they can pick it more accurately?
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
I just commented to a friend (Hi Chad!) a couple of days ago that /. has to change their slogan, because I don't feel like a nerd. As many people've said (and the article said), nerd has a more negative connotation associated with it. I certainly think of the typical glasses-with-tape-wearing, pocket-protecting, slide-ruling, socially-inepting, pizza-facing guy when I think of nerd.
A geek, on the other hand, knows what they're doing, can carry on a conversation outside of computers, and knows what the best beer in town is (Hermann's, yeah!).
My non-computer friends keep trying to insult me by calling me a geek. I always thank them. If they start calling me a nerd, however...
In the wonderful book "Microserfs", author Douglas Coupland touches on this subject severel times. I won't try to recreate his words -- you should go read it yourselves -- but one thing I remember is the idea of 'Geek' as beeing a term which implies 'hireability'.
On a side note, the Danish translator of 'Microserfs' had a rough time because the translation of 'Geek' and 'Nerd' to danish is not injective -- we have only one word (that I know of) for this, namely 'nørd'. Wonder if other languages have more/few alternatives than the two english ones.
It depends entirely on the age group. To a taunting third grader, a geek/nerd aren't at all different. But to an educated grown-up(me?), a geek is a derogatory term used by those 3rd-grade taunters turned adults who haven't bothered to learn things technical/useful whereas a nerd is adept in things requiring brains, and so makes said stupid-taunter-people jealous.
Malaprops aside, imho, (you all know what it means, i don't need to YELL IT) a geek is smart, yet socially inept. Quite able to code, build rockets, visualize space-time like none other, yet one who would posts comments such as this at 1:00 AM.
A nerd can have less actual ability than a geek, but the nerd has social skills, so those abilities are often more useful than the geek's. A nerd wouldn't waste his time writing something as valuable and important as this. So a nerd is perhaps the more noble nomenclature, yet a geek can pride him/herself on possessing such a superior intellect that normal social contexts just don't apply.
geeks and nerds are of the same aptitude, the only difference being that geeks are subtle about it and nerds want to rub it in peoples faces and are artificially high on themselves.
Frank Zappa was a geek and Miles Davis was a nerd.
-sometimes the majority only means that all the fools are on the same side
Yup, agreed on that one. "Spod" I've always taken as someone who hangs out a lot on EW-* talkers or MUDs etc; to me a 'nerd' is a wannabee geek, too - lacking in social interaction or something like that, gets over-excited at every nerd toy to drop from Bill's gracious hand, rather than Linus' ;)
~Tim
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There's power in co-opting a negatively-tainted word and turning it into a positive word. Queer and Nigger are both words that are, in the appropriate peer group, used as power words.
I think geek is a stronger word than nerd. So, with this in mind, a definition of geek could be someone who realizes that they are uncool or unfashionable (by some popular prevailing notion of coolness or fashion) -- and who doesn't really care, and decides not to invest the enormous amounts of time and energy that normal people do in being fashionable, because he/she has more important things to do. Hence the co-option of the harsher word geek.
But what is a non nerd/geek called? I like the word hipster or urban hipster, because, like nerd/geek, is vaguely insulting.
"We're geeks, and you'll pay us to talk over your head!"
*g*
Inspired by being paid $75 an hour to grovel through a guy's web pages explaining, experimenting and going "Well. That's interesting. The reason that didn't work is because..." (though actually we spent 3 hours at it and I only billed for the one we originally planned on)
A nerd is hopelessly focused on one thing, to the exception of pretty much all else. You can be a computer nerd, an RPG nerd, a chemistry nerd, or even a politics nerd. But the implication is that you are wearing blinders to the rest of the world.
Whereas a geek may be equally adept at the same thing as the nerd, but the geek has a broader worldview. The geek goes out on Saturday night, reads the newspaper to see what's going on in the world, and has other hobbies and other areas of interest.
Geeks are friends with non-geeks, too. Nerds just tend to be friends with other nerds.
Geeks date and get married. Nerds are frightened to - though some get over it. In general geeks are more socially aware.
People can have tendencies in both directions - it's not entirely a "either/or" situation. But, for the most part, geeks realize the existence of shades of gray. nerds are more binary in nature. Ask a geek to turn on the light, and they will turn on the nearest or the brightest light - making a judgement as to which one you want. if they aren't sure, they'll ask you which one you meant. Ask a nerd to turn on a light without explicitly specifying which one, and you run a risk of being ignored completely.
Geeks usually know that they're geeks. Most like it that way. Nerds usually don't realize that they are nerds. Those who do have enough self-awareness that they may eventually become geeks.
Geeks use higher-level languages than nerds - geeks hack Perl, write shell scripts, and the nerdier ones do Java. Nerds start with Java as a HLL, and work down to assembler.
When I was growing up a couple of decades ago the two were equally negative, but "geek" referred to personality and "nerd" usually strictly referred to someone technologically obsessed. The terms have obviously changed over the years. Now, even though I see nerd as a less positive term than geek - neither is really much of an insult anymore outside the third grade.
But all in all, geeks and nerds combined rule the world today - and it's good to be the king!
- -Josh Turiel
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
Nerds post first and think second ; Geeks think first and post second
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Exigo spamos et dona ferentes
...and proud of it!
As a member of all these groups (and a goth too), I think it's striking how similar the experience of being stereotyped is in each case.
Data point: "nerd" carries much stronger associations of "poorly dressed, socially and sexually inept" than "geek" for me too.
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If you read the article, a full etymology is there, but for those of you too lazy to click the link, here it is...
The words "geek" and "nerd" have been floating around for decades and have morphed well beyond their original meanings. Here's a brief history lesson:
Of the two terms, "nerd" is the newest. Experts guess its etymology probably dates back to a 1950 work by Dr. Seuss, "If I Ran the Zoo." A passage from the book goes, "I'll sail to Ka-Troo and bring back an It-Kutch, a Preep and a Proo, a Nerkle, a Nerd and a Seersucker, too!" Soon after the book came out, "nerd" started turning up in conversation. In the '60s, it was usually used in reference to your basic square. During the '70s, it came to carry the intelligent-but-socially-inept meaning that persists today.
Geek, on the other hand, has its roots in a now-obsolete Dutch word, "geck," which meant "fool." By most accounts, the word "geek" came into common usage around the turn of the century to refer to a peculiar or eccentric -- but really smart -- person. In the late '20s, it was also used to describe a carnival performer with a repertoire of disgusting tricks such as biting off chicken heads. The original definition has prevailed.
If I could only live my life with my threshold at 4...
Why do feel like that in a year or two they'll be GAP commercials where iterchangeable people will be running around in jeans and untucked t-shirts, Palm IX's in hand, to the tune of bland industrial music?
Come on people. These identity debates are fun, but realize this is nothing but marketting. The same people who scorned us because we don't give a flying fuck about their social games and status symbols are now trying to cash in on our new-found power in the current economy.
If you think it's now cool to be a geek, you don't get it. You're letting other people have power in how you define yourself.
ROTFLMAO!!! We've have riots in London this year (next "protest" coming 30th of this month, btw - if you live in london, be careful!), basically dregs of society bitchin' because they have no money (apart from the free state handouts they get from our taxes... Hmm - we're paying them to wreck our streets?).
Anyway, back on topic, what would a "riot nrrrd" do on a protest march? I can see
Free the Penguin protest signs
Handouts of various Linux distros
Beowulf clusters being formed over wireless LAN's, all over the city
Public speakers explaining how that STW thingy was finally unravelled
Obviously, the police would lose control of the crowd, who would then go on a 12 hour marathon spree of:
Fixing broken ATM's
Realigning street lamps
A mass recompiling of their kernel of choice in the park
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Geek, on the other hand, is a cool word, and I proudly label myself one. It lends itself to all sorts of interesting forms:
- geek out
- true geek
- geek central
One of the few places it doesn't fit is in the zenlike construct "hacker nature". "geek nature" just doesn't work for me (hence, "true geek").Of course, I come from Worcester Polytechnic Institute, the home of the word "gweep". But since that word was pretty much seized by a group of guys that called themselves GweepCo, it just never really stuck to think of yourself as a gweep unless you were part of that crew. And I'll bet a nickel that there's at least a handful of GweepCo reading right now that are gonna yell at me.
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
Nerds are also social misfits, and may or may not be geek-like in intelligence - the significant difference is that nerds usually have the inability to fit into any social groups - even groups of geeks.
Just my opinion, of course.
When I was growing up in those pre-IBM PC days both words were a nasty insult used by those who could only measure their own worth by trying to destroy or demean others. I cring when I see others call themselves geeks or nerds because, to me, it means the assholes have won. :(
I guess there is a generational divide even among those of us with the hacker (classic meaning) mentality. To call oneself a geek or a nerd except as a broad joke, is a sure sign of a luser or a hip-wannabee to those of my generation.
I guess if it makes you happy to call yourself either of these two words, more power to you, but please understand that some of us despise those words with a passion.
"All the darkness in the world can not quench the light of one small candle."
I'm not even sure how many computers thereare in my house . . . But I'm pretty sure that I have more computers than kids (Yes, I know how many kids I have (4), their names, their birthdays, and it's my wife who can't remember our aniversery).
Lesssee, there's eyry, the K6, temporarily commandeered by the kids (who will be using FreeBSD, not windows, to face the internet with the cable modem installed in their room yesterday); there's Milton, the powerbook 180 that's in pieces and will never run again; a pair of 486's, one of which will work again once I get a new drive; wanderer, a backlit macportable; my old tandy 102; my 486 thinkpad, and the parts for Mercury, my homebrew from, hmm, over 20 years ago. I think that's all of them,but I'm not sure anymore. Plus there's my Mac Classic in california, and my old 128k mac that my brother expanded but never gave back, and 3 apple II's waiting for me to pick up in california (they're only e's, though, not original or even plus).
Ooops, scratch one of the 486's as an independent computer; it got subsumed into eyry for its copy of windows for the kids software (yes, its broken hard drive is physically mounted in eyry).
Hmm, how many is that'i lost count . . .
I had one when I was a kid back in the 1970s, but I haven't seen one (outside of movies) in about 20 years.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Really? I used one a little over a year ago, when I was learning drafting (of course). The class was actually a combined drafting/CAD course, required for all engineering students, but I enjoyed it. /me/ a geek, they better have a smile on their face, or they are in _big_ trouble. ;)
Back on topic, if someone calls
Communication is only possible between equals
I can't *wait* until The Gap changes their marketing strategy
I can't wait until Pepsi-Co changes their marketing strategy for Mountain Dew from showing people doing extreme-sports-type things to showing a bunch of geeks eating pizza, drinking Dew, and hacking kernel code at five A.M. on the fourth day of a hundred-hour coding session, since we know who the poeple are who really "do the Dew". As a backdrop, they could use something that looks like my cubicle, with nearly a thousand empty Mountain Dew cans stacked up. (Once they were piled five high on my shelf, I decided to glue them together so they wouldn't fall on the head of the marketing guy across the wall; I've also made a Borg cube, several versions of SGI's old cube logo, the five Platonic solids, and a throne for Tux to sit on. They could profile me and talk about Mountain Dew art, etc.)
It was done a few years ago, with (I think) the Volkswagen Jetta: they did a commercial with a gang of hackers who were writing a driving game and using their car for inspiration, It showed them piling into the car while eating pizza, drinking soda, and generally being weird, and it made them look pretty cool. That might have actually marked the beginning of the mainstream glamorization of geekhood.
David Gould
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