I am now a geek

By alice | March 1, 2008

It’s interesting how the word “geek” has morphed from the extreme insult it used to be when I was a student, when it basically meant “extremely unattractive loser”, through the whole techy and computer world, to becoming a whole personality/ approach that can be applied to more or less anything. Before, geeks liked maths and science not arts and crafts. Now, you can be a geek of embroidery. I have not yet heard of a “dating geek” however.

But there’s more to it than special interests. Isn’t “geek” just the new “intelligent”? You never hear the “i’ word anymore. Or is it the healthy version of Asperger’s? Or are they the same thing?

Whatever. This is from a really old post on 43 folders, about the book I’m (somewhat desperately) reading, Getting Things Done:

geeks are often disorganized or have a twisted skein of attention-deficit issues
geeks love assessing, classifying, and defining the objects in their world
geeks crave actionable items and roll their eyes at “mission statements” and lofty management patois
geeks like things that work with technology-agnostic and lofi tools
geeks like frameworks but tend to ignore rules
geeks are unusually open to change (if it can be demonstrated to work better than what they’re currently using)
geeks like fixing things on their own terms
geeks have too many projects and lots and lots of stuff

I like the bit about liking frameworks but ignoring rules. And I especially like the bit about having too many projects and lots and lots of stuff. The number of projects rattling around the inside of this house right now is ridiculous. For instance, we really need to replace the floor of the kitchen as the first step in bringing it out of the early 1960s and into the dishwasher era, but this is presently impossible because of the (a) series of entrepreneurial food experiments happening in there, around (b) the antique dressing table in the middle of the floor waiting to be stripped and restored. It’s been there ever since I was going to do it, which was before deciding to go ahead and do something else instead.

Tip of the icebergs, etc. Telling you all that made me feel a bit better though :)

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1 Comment »

One Response to “I am now a geek”

Shefaly Says:
March 7th, 2008 at 4:50 pm

Alice: couldn’t find one for geeks, but here is a nerd quiz if you want to take it :-)

http://www.nerdtests.com/ft_nq.php

PS: I did, as you can guess!