Geeks Read Free Page A

autonomy and power? geeks respond; they can be unnervingly arrogant. Geeks know a lot of things most people don’t know and can do things most people are only beginning to understand.
    Until now, nerds and geeks (and their more conventional predecessors, the engineers), marginalized as unglamorous, have never had great status or influence. But the Internet is the hottest and hippest place in American culture, and the whole notion of outsiderness has been up-ended in a world where geeks are uniquely—and often solely—qualified to operate the most complex and vital systems, and where the demand for their work will greatly exceed their ability to fulfill it for years to come.
    For the first time ever, it’s a great time to be a geek.
    DEFINING GEEKHOOD
    WHAT, EXACTLY, is a geek?
    After years of trying to grapple with the question, I still find it largely unanswerable. Continually meeting and corresponding with geeks has made my idea broader than the stereotype of the asocial, techno-obsessed loner.
    For one thing, you can hardly be a geek all by yourself. The online world is one giant community comprised of hundreds of thousands of smaller ones, all involving connections to other people. The geekiest hangouts on the Net and Web—the open source and free software movement sites—are vast, hivelike communities of worker geeks patching together cheap and efficient new software that they distribute freely and generously to one another. That’s not something loners could or would do.
    In fact, the word “geek” is growing so inclusive as to be practically undefinable. I’ve met skinny and fat geeks, awkward and charming ones, cheerful and grumpy ones—but never a dumb one.
    Still, in the narrowest sense, a contemporary geek is a computer-centered obsessive, one of the legions building the infrastructure of the Net and its related programs and systems. Geeks are at its white-hot epicenter.
    Beyond them are the brainy, single-minded outsiders drawn to a wide range of creative pursuits—from raves to Japanese animation—who live beyond the contented or constrained mainstream and find passion and joy in what they do. Sometimes they feel like and call themselves geeks.
    The truth is, geeks aren’t like other people. They’ve grown up in the freest media environment ever. They talk openly about sex and politics, debate the future of technology, dump on revered leaders, challenge the existence of God, and are viscerally libertarian. They defy government, business, or any other institution to shut down their freewheeling culture.
    And how could anyone? Ideas
are
free, literally and figuratively. Geeks download software, movies, and music without charge; they never pay for news or information; they swap and barter. Increasingly, they live in a digital world, one much more compelling than the one that has rejected or marginalized them. Being online has liberated them in stunning ways. Looks don’t matter online. Neither does race, the number of degrees one has or doesn’t have, or the cadence of speech. Ideas and personalities, presented in their purest sense, have a different dimension.
    Geeks know—perhaps better than anyone—that computers aren’t a substitute for human contact, for family and friends, for neighborhoods and restaurants and theaters. But cyberspace is a world, albeit a virtual one. Contact and community mean somewhat different things there, but they are real nonetheless.
    THE ROOTS of the term are important. At the turn of the century, “geek” had a very particular meaning—geeks were the destitute nomads who bit the heads off chickens and rats at circuses and carnivals in exchange for food or a place to sleep.
    For nearly seventy years, the term was unambiguously derisive, expanding to label freaks, oddballs, anyone distinctly nonconformist or strange.
    But in the 1980s, a number of sometimes outcast or persecuted social groups in America—blacks, gays, women, nerds—began practicing language