Guardian: We're all nerds now
The Guardian speculates: "Over the past decade, those cultural phenomena that we once filed as geeky minority pursuits have become our masters. The Internet now boasts a global community numbering 679 million. Video gaming pulls in more annual revenue than Hollywood. For its part, the film industry seems increasingly in thrall to the comic-book movie (Spider-Man, Hulk), the sci-fi epic (The Matrix, Star Wars) and the wizard fantasy (Harry Potter). Next week sees the release of the final instalment in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy, awash with elves and hobbits and surely the most monumental nerd-fest of the lot. All of which raises some frightening implications. Could it be that there are more nerds today than there were before?"
Not to take this too seriously, but there were, for those of us who spent some socially awkward years between the ages of 10 and 15, many gradations of that state, and I don't think we considered them all equal, or all nerdy. It was possible to love Tolkien and fantasy and sci-fi writing without necessarily being a comic book maven, and visa versa. It was also possible to know too many big words, dig computers, or simply not be good at one particular thing (catching footballs, say) and be cool - what made a nerd was a certain social awkwardness that transcended hobbies. I'm pretty sure if, at that age, I'd dropped all my native interests and gone out for the same sports the most popular boy in class did, I still wouldn't have been drip[ping charisma all over the schoolyard.
An example? Sure, how's this for penultimate preteen nerdiness?
I can remember being entranced with the BASIC programming language on my little Commodore Vic20 computer I'd won for delivering papers on my paper route. I was really into writing games, and since the most sophisticated real home video games back then were still just beyond Space Invaders and Pong, I really thought my games (crafted by POKING graphics one bit at a time onto the screen, moving them around and PEEKING to see if they'd hit anything) were pretty darn good.
But what was really cool was that back then you stored your programs on cassette tape -- which you could also play back on a regular tape recorder. The results sounded like a cross between a modem connection and the baby monitor from "Signs".
So when I wasn't writing computer code, I'd get together with a few like minded friends, drag the tape recorder up a tree, and play back the computer programs as an aural background to our imaginary space travel (the tree, a huge pine, was of course our multi-level rocket ship).
The Guardian speculates: "Over the past decade, those cultural phenomena that we once filed as geeky minority pursuits have become our masters. The Internet now boasts a global community numbering 679 million. Video gaming pulls in more annual revenue than Hollywood. For its part, the film industry seems increasingly in thrall to the comic-book movie (Spider-Man, Hulk), the sci-fi epic (The Matrix, Star Wars) and the wizard fantasy (Harry Potter). Next week sees the release of the final instalment in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy, awash with elves and hobbits and surely the most monumental nerd-fest of the lot. All of which raises some frightening implications. Could it be that there are more nerds today than there were before?"
Not to take this too seriously, but there were, for those of us who spent some socially awkward years between the ages of 10 and 15, many gradations of that state, and I don't think we considered them all equal, or all nerdy. It was possible to love Tolkien and fantasy and sci-fi writing without necessarily being a comic book maven, and visa versa. It was also possible to know too many big words, dig computers, or simply not be good at one particular thing (catching footballs, say) and be cool - what made a nerd was a certain social awkwardness that transcended hobbies. I'm pretty sure if, at that age, I'd dropped all my native interests and gone out for the same sports the most popular boy in class did, I still wouldn't have been drip[ping charisma all over the schoolyard.
An example? Sure, how's this for penultimate preteen nerdiness?
I can remember being entranced with the BASIC programming language on my little Commodore Vic20 computer I'd won for delivering papers on my paper route. I was really into writing games, and since the most sophisticated real home video games back then were still just beyond Space Invaders and Pong, I really thought my games (crafted by POKING graphics one bit at a time onto the screen, moving them around and PEEKING to see if they'd hit anything) were pretty darn good.
But what was really cool was that back then you stored your programs on cassette tape -- which you could also play back on a regular tape recorder. The results sounded like a cross between a modem connection and the baby monitor from "Signs".
So when I wasn't writing computer code, I'd get together with a few like minded friends, drag the tape recorder up a tree, and play back the computer programs as an aural background to our imaginary space travel (the tree, a huge pine, was of course our multi-level rocket ship).
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