The Great Geek Trap
Posted Sun Mar 25 12:39:27 2001 by steveg |
By Steve Gilliard
Jon Katz once asked me if I was a geek. At the time, I said no,
which was silly. Most of the women I know are geeks. They have
progressed in geekdom over time. The older I get, the more intense
their interest in things we would define as geek.
The good thing about geek women is that they are amazingly tolerant of any discipline you choose to pursue, more or less.
The whole geek culture is one where people are finally freed to
explore what they want, when they want. And you can get into some
pretty woolly corners of the world. Gun toting Linux geeks, bisexual
orgy having, X dosing code kiddies, oh, you can get into some truly
weird shit in geek culture.
There is a myth within American culture that geekdom and sexuality
are alien, which is insane. The best geek movie ever, Real Genius, is
one of the few movies filled with the kind of smart people I actually
went to school with, the kind who liked to fuck and drink beer and eat
hamburgers(pre-mad cow).
The problem for geeks, however, is that they are prone to being
exploited by their own enthusiasms. During the second dotcom boom, the
idea was that if you worked hard enough, long enough, that you could
accomplish anything. You can't.
I know so many geeks, people who are bright enough, but here's the
deal: they ain't that bright. Talk to a real, certified genius some
time, I recently have, and their narrow genius is mild compared to
seeing someone who is genuinely one of the most intelligent people you
have ever met in your life. But the thing is that without being nice,
and funny, and clever, all that intelligence goes to waste.
Intelligence is nothing without compassion.
One of the most important skills most geeks do not have is the
ability to listen. They simply will not listen to other people. After
all, after a lifetime of nos, once you start hearing yes, once you get
validated, why would you seek anything else in your life? The only
problem is that you need people to tell you no.
Why did so many dotcoms, hiring so many bright people, fail badly?
Cronyism combined with the inability to listen. We know of a person
who's expertise online goes back to the mainframe days, yet was ignored
when he was actually hired to consult for various companies. The
arrogance dripped from these people like sweat after an August summer
walk.
See, geek culture, as far as it goes, is really a way to survive
the problems of intelligence in American society, which places a great
deal of emphasis on equality. Smart kids get tossed right in the dumper
with the learning disabled and the autistic. I would bet that if you
did an IQ test of kids on ritalin, most would score above average. Why?
Because they get bored in class and they have to be controlled, so up
comes the chemical straitjacket.
We have a society which encourages averageness. Not mediocrity
because we detest the stupid, but we also have a real problem with the
bright in our society. We simply have little way to deal with them in
our schools.
The problem with geeks in the workplace is that many of them are
exploited because of their intelligence. With the ability to work
without any restraint, these people will spend days working without
rest or respite. The idea that they would limit themselves is well,
unpleasant.
There are two kinds of geeks, ones who have thrived in school and
like the idea of approval from others and those who did poorly in
school and pretty much confound the system. Einstein was one of these.
He was smarter than the people who taught him. The difference between
him and his peers is clear. Einstein liked people and cultivated them.
True genius does that, at least in America.
Many very smart people have miserable school records. They just
never find a way to fit into the system. Working on programs is
probably the only way possible for many of these people to translate
their complex internal world outside themselves. Now, not every geek is
a Linux-hacking, machine-building type. Some are writers, some are
photographers, but they all share a love of knowledge.
Geek culture can obsess on minutia. Ask a geek who was the first
captain on Star Trek or the name of the actor who played Chewbacca, and
you'll get an answer in minutes. People will tell you this in a
heartbeat. Ask them when the last time that they had a romantic moment
and the answer might take a lot longer.
The one thing about geek culture which rots is the lack of human
connections encouraged by it. You can debate artificial crap for
months. No one really cares if phasers can really work, they do care if
you appreciate a day off in the woods. The trivial replaces the real.
You can debate things that you haven't done, will never do, can never
be done because it is in that way you feel connected to others.
Geeks tend to be collectors of things. Matrix figurines, gadgets,
t-shirts. Not that this is wrong, but it morphs into a weird kind of
consumerism, where the more obscure and unique a product is, the more
value it has in this odd culture of ours. The problem with cherishing
obscura is that it distorts your relationship to the real world. The
obscure is just that, obscure. You sometimes need to step back and see
the larger world around you.
The geek world and the world of oh, a greedy blueshirt asshole, is
very different. The people who use their talent rarely respect it. The
Bill Gates, Larry Ellisons and John Chambers of the world are few and
far between. Many will still try to run you into the ground so their
consumerist dreams come true. At least Gates does it because he built
his programmer's nirvana. Free Mountain Dew, tons of toys, a macho
internal culture and lots and lots of work. You can work as hard as you
want at Microsoft and no one will ever stop you. Programmer heaven.
The other people do the same the same thing, but don't have any
respect for your skills. Which is a shame, but a real risk for any
geek. The great geek trap is that the thing you love the most may be
turned against you for the profit of others. The only way to avoid that
is to step outside yourself and be honest. You learn this trait over
time, but if you don't, you can screw yourself badly for no reason.
|
Name: Flintheart Goldglom
Email:
Date: Wed Mar 28 14:15:05 2001
Comment:
I suffer from the opposite problem as Steve Gillaird's test anxiety. I
was an excellent student in the classroom, but didn't have the
discipline or concentration to sit down and couldn't manage deadlines
to save my life (Oh, yeah, and I was subject to insomnia, depression,
and lost fifteen pounds my last semester because I was too crazy to
eat). As long as I was given a task to do and an hour to do it in, I
could outperform 90% of the other students, match 5%, and be blown away
by the last 5% who were ultra-"with-it" in and out of the classroom.
But given three months, I couldn't produce an 8 page essay on any topic
in a scholarly manner to save my life. Fortunately, I learned the
secret of getting good grades long ago: convince a professor that you
WOULD do the work, if you COULD do the work.
The scam: I could perform A work in two classes, B work in one
class, and have two classes where I did A work in class and
plea-bargained a C or an F on outside work, and have final scores of
A,A,B,B,C, for a GPA that was still above the required number to keep
my scholarship. Professors didn't have a way of comparing notes, so I
could act (or even be) crazy on demand every semester to take care of
those annoying grades.
Sure, I can't afford to have my diploma framed, since my degree
is worthless. The important part is the lessons I learned in school.
I learned lessons about myself: I am a quitter, and when the going
gets touch, it's time I was going. I learned lessons about my classes:
It didn't matter what happened in any of them before, because nothing I
did in one related to or carried over to the next, and any effort to
relate them to anything in the real world or my own experience was
useless. Most importantly, I learned that people can often be
manipulated into accepting lower standards. |
Name:
Email:
Date: Tue Mar 27 15:19:08 2001
Comment: NEWSPEAK IS ULTRAMAXHIP
|
Name: bob
Email: pale_13@usa.net
Date: Tue Mar 27 09:01:44 2001
Comment: "Survey says: aaaaannnnkk!!!"
I'd prefer language that won't be the "Valley" of the early millenium, thank you.
|
Name:
Email:
Date: Tue Mar 27 08:18:55 2001
Comment: NEWSPEAK IS ULTRAPLUSCOOL
|
Name: samezone19
Email:
Date: Tue Mar 27 01:06:43 2001
Comment:
>It's particularly galling to wind up working for "mundanes," who
can't tell a franistan from a Johnson rod and certainly don't know
which Star Trek ("classic") episode had Batgirl in it.
Dig - our era is that in which the "intersubjective space" - our
shared reference points derived from mass media - are being abolished.
The signs are everywhere - even in the fact that fewer people are
watching the damned Oscars. With 500 channels, you have 500 non-shared
mental spaces that people inhabit. With 50 million, you have people
literally unable to agree on _basic_ conventions.
I predict that in 100 years, we won't even speak the same language,
or if we do, it will be dumbed down to a very basic level of
granularity. But maybe we won't even have to wait that long - I
mentioned "John Henry" - a basic American folk icon - to somebody the
other day and she didn't have a clue as to what I meant. But if I had
mentioned "polymorphic inheritance", she would have.
Our culture is being shattered into a hundred million parts and
nobody's raising hell about it - except at this site, of course, where
reactionary conservatives are always welcome :) |
Name: Carl Guderian
Email: carlg@vermilion-sands.com
Date: Mon Mar 26 23:51:30 2001
Comment: I'm with retard (well, you know what I mean...).
People who have only one interest tend to guard it jealously. They
won't talk to anyone who knows less about it and will try to prove
themselves to those who know more. It's particularly galling to wind up
working for "mundanes," who can't tell a franistan from a Johnson rod
and certainly don't know which Star Trek ("classic") episode had
Batgirl in it. But it's happened before and will happen again.
One needs a diverse portfolio of interests to avoid having too much
emotionally invested in just one if by ill luck it becomes popular.
It also helps to watch as well as listen. The other person's lack
of questions is a good indicator you're losing them, and glazing over
of eyes is an even better one.
|
Name: Bill Hoffman
Email: bill@buffnet.net
Date: Mon Mar 26 23:32:22 2001
Comment: Geeks might be amazed to know how many "greedy
blue-shirted assholes" are simply geeks who need
to make a living here and now, and have learned to keep their geeky thoughts to themselves. Some
have become leaders in the labor movement.
|
Name: Troll
Email: Troll@underthebridge.com
Date: Mon Mar 26 19:34:43 2001
Comment: "P.S.
I get horny when I hear about CPUs, VLIW, microcode,
microcontrollers, bus speeds, I2C, sdram, quake, MUDs, ATA,
multibooting OSes, vi, xemacs, gdb, perl, starcraft, diablo, and
changing jne to jmp to bypass software checks. "
Yea, I know what you mean. Problem is those pins from the older Pentiums hurt my dick. The G4 chips feel pretty good though.
|
Name: Retard
Email: retard@retard.com
Date: Mon Mar 26 19:11:30 2001
Comment:
I agree with you that grades are not a measure of intelligence. The
typical geeks ARE smart in whatever they are interested in and can do
fancy things with their field, but are pretty stupid when it comes to
solving the problem of people and society. Geeks may look down on the
marketing/HR guys or others but they really are too self absorbed to
figure out that these people have instead become geeks/experts of human
relationships. Granted that a lot of them are greedy assholes. If you
think about it, technical geeks are greedy assholes too. There are good
and bad people everywhere.
What we(technical geeks) should do is to learn from others in a
field that is totally foreign to us. It is hard and it is scary. Get
down from our imaginary pedestals of intelligence. School sucks. I hate
it. However, I realize that it is what people look at. You know.. its
freaking hard and boring. But some of us are just too LAZY and AFRAID
and all we want to do is BITCH and stay in our little techno bubble
where we have it made already.
P.S.
I get horny when I hear about CPUs, VLIW, microcode,
microcontrollers, bus speeds, I2C, sdram, quake, MUDs, ATA,
multibooting OSes, vi, xemacs, gdb, perl, starcraft, diablo, and
changing jne to jmp to bypass software checks. |
Name: steve gilliard
Email: sgilliard@netslaves.com
Date: Mon Mar 26 18:22:33 2001
Comment: Bob,
I have an e-mail address and belong to several mailing lists if you
want to join one. None on WWII, but there are a few where the
conversations are excellent.
But I think our fellow readers might be bored witless with another conversation on the subject.
|
Name:
Email:
Date: Mon Mar 26 17:25:33 2001
Comment: psychometric tests are more insightful than academic grades!?!
|
Name: bob
Email: pale_13@uas.net
Date: Mon Mar 26 16:26:23 2001
Comment: "I could go on, but I'd be boring people.:-)"
AW, you don't want to discuss how the British commanders almost blew it at Caen? :-)
I used to know the Batle of the Bulge pretty well.
"Nuts."
|
Name: steve gilliard
Email: sgilliard@netslaves.com
Date: Mon Mar 26 16:08:54 2001
Comment: Bob,
OK, the 4th Infantry landed on Utah, the far western beach. The 1st
and 29th Divisions landed on Omaha, with elements of the 2nd and all of
the 5th Ranger Battalions. The scene in Saving Private Ryan is when the
5th is at one of the exits on Omaha Beach, Easy Red, I believe. They
were attached to the 29th ID. It's when Norman Cota said "ranger's lead
the way"
The 82nd was supposed to drop behind Utah and the 101st behind
Omaha, the problem was that during the drop, the two units scattered
over nearly 100 miles of Norman countryside.
The British landed at Sword and Gold and the Canadians at Juno. The
British 6th Division dropped far more successfully behind their beaches
and succeeded in seizing the bridges over the Orne Canal and the
Merville Battery overlooking Sword.
I could go on, but I'd be boring people.:-)
Actually, the battle I know by heart is Market Garden, the drop on Arnhem in September, 1944
|
Name: The Man
Email:
Date: Mon Mar 26 15:09:03 2001
Comment: Nice to see someone else appreciates Real Genius, Val Kilmer's long forgotten masterpiece.
|
Name: Emily Dresner-Thornber
Email: emily@netslaves.com
Date: Mon Mar 26 14:58:50 2001
Comment:
I had given up on English Comp and English Lit classes by the time I
had gotten to college for various reasons. I took my solace in
Philosophy classes, where it was okay to give the TA or the professor a
run for his money and nothing was hallowed ground. |
Name: bob
Email: pale_13@usa.net
Date: Mon Mar 26 14:30:27 2001
Comment: Emily,
Maybe that is becuase you used that criticism trick in high school.
I am quite sure that challenging the canon is not only accepted on the
university level, but is one good way of getting published. My own
personal book of woe was Moby Dick, a great story mangled by a marginal writer.
|
Name: bob
Email: pale_13@usa.net
Date: Mon Mar 26 14:26:56 2001
Comment: Steve,
The Big Red One, the Canadian 1st Army, and the British 2nd came by
sea, the 82nd and 101st came by air. There was various British commando
units doing things as well. Patton, sat it out, as they were being used
as a diversion. How am I doing, perfessor? :)
And like you, I don't do math.
|
Name: Emily Dresner-Thornber
Email: emily@netslaves.com
Date: Mon Mar 26 14:23:03 2001
Comment: Grades are a measure of how well you compete within the system, using the system's rules. If you, say, decide that Old Man and the Sea
really wasn't that good of a book and delinate why in an essay exam,
laying out your reasoning on why it fails a piece of literature, you're
not going to pass. (I tried that trick in High School. Didn't work.)
If you are not interested in the system, not ready to be part of
the system, cannot learn using the system's rules, or not willing to
compete on the system's grounds, then you're not going to get the
Anderson Consulting/Hewlett-Packard GPA. You're going to have something
that you don't want to put on your resume. End of story. Then again, if
you're not part of the system, you're probably not HP/Anderson
Consulting material anyway.
This works against creative people who have no interest in the
system, and there are plenty of fine programmers who flunked out of
college. This also works against folks who didn't get their majors
right on the first try, ended up with a batch of bad math and science
grades when they should have been History majors, and coned their GPAs.
They might have been brilliant on their second try, but that one little
number is killer.
Personally, I think it's crap, and would rather hand out a
portfolio of work than cough up a list of classes. It's a far better
standard of current work and potential. Does anyone really care what I
got in Standard Arabic? How about Philsophy of the Physics of Space
Time or Chinese Philosophy post 300 AD? I mean, honestly, why does HP
care that I read dead languages? But it's figured into my GPA for my
Undergrad, oh yes sirree. |
Name: steve gilliard
Email: sgilliard@netslaves.com
Date: Mon Mar 26 14:10:04 2001
Comment:
GPA is especially useless for people in IT. Grades are often political.
How many people earned an A on their back or because the professor
agreed with their politics.
The problem is that intelligence is usually defined as an
expression of math and science. I was horrible at math and uninterested
in science. But I can recall, without prompting, the divisions which
landed at Omaha Beach and the sectors of that beach and the weather
that day.
My intelligence is centered on words and facts, not numbers. And in
many cases, it would be overlooked. I scored reasonably well on my
achievements and AP tests, and I only took them once.
There are many kinds of intelligence and companies which overlook that and place emphasis on grades will be screwed.
And even worse,are the companies addicted to top 20 grads. Oh, he
went to Stanford, so he's obviously smart. Well, no. Harvard has its
share of dummies, there for various reasons, who skate by as art
history majors. And City College has turned out nobel prize winning
phyiscists.
Schools and grades are no indicator of intelligence. John Lee has a
film degree from Brooklyn College and can write programs over a weekend
which are as good as any I have ever seen.
Grades mean nothing when compared to intelligence.
|
Name: Emily Dresner-Thornber
Email: emily@netslaves.com
Date: Mon Mar 26 12:28:32 2001
Comment:
GPA, at least in the lower levels of undergrad, is a measure of how
well the individual tests and regurgitates on demand. Some people, like
me, work very slowly and methodically, thinking things through, and
hour long time limits are a level of fluster on top of what would
normally be a perfectly easy set of questions. This causes frustration,
anger, and lower GPAs.
Often, those people who work very slowly do very well in classes
that have term-long projects and plenty of time to sit there and work
on the problem. But, these classes are only offered later on in the
classwork, and by this time, very bright people have "washed out" of
the program to go do something that doesn't require a monitor with a
stop watch while answering inane answers about proofs with second
predicate calculus.
As a very mechanically-oriented person, I find answering a set of
questions that have nothing to do with the real world and applying rote
formula to them to be nothing more than a chore at which I consistantly
fail -- unless it's mathematics, at which time I've programmed myself
to see the math problem as just a mechanical process and work through
it naturally. I can memorize facts until the end of time and spit them
out, but I find it much easier to write a paper or build a machine than
it is to write out the abstract rules and laws behind the machine. And,
ta-da, the real world is more interested in building machines and
writing papers than answering 10 questions in 50 minutes.
I believe the reason many very intelligent people wash out is
because they're a victim of the MIT formula: teach the theory, test on
the theory, and all else will follow. For example, "If the student
understands the strict, mathematical proofs behind Kepler's laws of
motion, they should easily be able to answer any question about
Kepler's laws of motion." Applied in the broad, most people fail: few
people can look at a mathematical proof as the introduction to a
subject and understand the applications, which is what the test
requires. Given a physical model of a system to work from, far more
people will pass.
The trick, I found, as someone who cannot work from theory
but holds a masters in engineering is to ignore the professor, hit the
resources, and find a practical application of the subject: be it data
structures or embedded controllers or whathaveyou. Unfortunately, most
kids are told they're mechanical instead of procedural people, are
never taught to use this to become evil world dictators, become
frustrated, don't realize there are resources, and wander off to go do
something better with their time other than consistantly failing. |
Name: Troll
Email: Troll@underthebridge.com
Date: Mon Mar 26 12:09:53 2001
Comment:
Got that right... I agree. Hewlett Crappard always ask GPA on job
interviews. They want only the best of the best as they see it. That is
why their company is going to hell fast - they pass on the true
unrealized talent, those with more average grades, but a wealth of REAL
world knowledge. That is why HP and the "HP-way" (LOL) is all bullshit.
An old economy dinosaur that needs to be slaughtered. Oh well, at least
they make good printers. |
Name: got that right
Email:
Date: Mon Mar 26 12:05:37 2001
Comment:
"Many very smart people have miserable school records. They just never
find a way to fit into the system. Working on programs is probably the
only way possible for many of these people to translate their complex
internal world outside themselves. Now, not every geek is a
Linux-hacking, machine-building type. Some are writers, some are
photographers, but they all share a love of knowledge."
...as with the rest of this article, very well said. GPA does not, in any way, measure intelligence.
|
Name: bob
Email: pale_13@usa.net
Date: Mon Mar 26 09:11:50 2001
Comment: BTW, just becuase you don't crack a PC's case unless absolutely necessary doesn't mean you aren't a geek in other areas.
I know at least one guy who does Web by day, and rebuilds/refinishes WWII era firearms by night.
|
Name: steve gilliard
Email: sgilliard@netslaves.com
Date: Mon Mar 26 08:04:10 2001
Comment:
Uh, I built my last machine from a motherboard. I don't replace power
supplies, I buy a new case. But I could. Overclocking is too risky to
your equipment. The chips go fast enough now. Buy a better video card
and more memory. You can run 256MB for nothing now.
Trust me, we have people around here who do that shit and more. Not
us, since we're writers, but we have spend plenty of time with people
who can and do.
The people who do hard core hacking usually have a federal felony
conviction in their records. This thing you call hacking is really
script kiddie work. Like McDonalds to real burgers.
Do not assume that there are not hard core geeks here. There are.
|
Name: samezone19
Email:
Date: Mon Mar 26 01:41:17 2001
Comment:
c'mon guys - there are no actual geeks anywhere near this site. Real
geeks don't buy a new PC - they buy a new motherboard, and spend
weekends setting jumpers and blowing power supplies. Real geeks don't
whine and complain about the Net industry - they perform real
industrial IWW-level sabotage of the oppressive infrastructure. They
don't write essays - they write subroutines. Let's cut the poseur crap
here - and not forget who you/we are, eh? |
Name: Shit spotter
Email:
Date: Sun Mar 25 23:53:43 2001
Comment: bob the builder
Dagnabbit!!! I must be a geek 'cause I never got the official sex manual.
Really now, geeks make own rules about sex? Kind of a load of crap.
There are people I know who aren't geeks and who are into all sorts of
weird twisted shit. I don't see a dichotomy where someone is either
adventurous(a geek) or straitlaced(baptist, amish, whatever).
It seems to me that open minded, adventurous individuals would make
their own rules up. There is no reason to believe that these qualities
and geekdom are one in the same. |
Name: bob the builder
Email: bob@builder.com.au
Date: Sun Mar 25 18:46:38 2001
Comment: bob sez
geeks make own rules about sex
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