So I stumbled into this article this morning .

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/21/nerd-and-geek-should-be-banned-professor-says/?partner=rss&emc=rss

And well, David Anderegg thinks I have been damaged by this or my son will be damaged by it.  Well here is my response to Mr. Anderegg.

Mr Anderegg,

Many words can have a negative connotation and when I was a child, nerd could have been one of them.  But now Geek and Nerd are words of power to my culture.  You coming along saying that they are word of damage proves that you haven’t worked to really understand the culture of nerds or geeks.  I love being a Geek.  I work in the land of IT. I do amateur photography as a hobby.  I tear apart tech to make it do things it wasn’t meant to do.  I play video games.  I love to work with wood and build things.  I love knowledge.  I am married.  I do what I can to be the best father I can.  I am working to do what I can to instill the geek into my son.  I have a solid core of friends that I can trust with my life.  I live in Mid-Michigan, certainly not a geek mecca.  I am not perfect. I have flaws but damn it, it wasn’t being called a geek or nerd that built these flaws.

I am tired of this crap thinking that we need to protect people from hurtful words.  We need to instill and build our children with the power to identify hurtful words and know how to grow from them.  I remember as a child one day clearly someone from a class older than me called me a faggot.  Now, I know didn’t know the slang of it was meant to be a hurtful words for homosexuals.  Heck, I really doubt she knew what faggot meant at that time either.  It hurt to be called that.  But it was from tone of voice and actions that made that word hurtful not the word itself.  Because of that, any word can be harmful.  What is next in your mind are we to ban the words Grease Monkey because to often in the media Grease Monkeys are reflected to be simple people working on mechanical devices?  I respect my Grease Monkey/Mechanic because he has knowledge that I do not.

It seems that the only people that sling around Geek and Nerd (or even Dork) in a hurtful way anymore are people that are jealous of the Power of the Geek.  Are you jealous of us Geeks?  Are you wishing to remove the power from us that we have build for ourselves by accepting label but then remaking the label to be one of power and status?  Are you trying to attack us and what we want of our children to be proud of what we are?

I am a Geek, a Nerd, a Dork and I am proud.  I wear it on my sleeve without fear.

Why does something shiny seem to bring out the sheep?

You know what I want to know really….what happened to the computer hackers, like the white hat freaks in the garage or at workbenches making stuff doing wacky tasks?  Where are the people that just want to do something for doing sake?

I don’t know if it is an age thing, something with society or what, but it seems as time is moving on, there are less people wanting to break and remake things.  I pick on the iPhone as it is one of the most popular things at the moment that is perfect to explain this.  I understand people wanting technology to just work and I understand that some do not want to hassle with things.  But to mindlessly drone forward about things seems a bit dumb too.  I know there are groups out there that have jailbreak’ed the iPhone, but in the end, that is quasi-legal/illegal.  Why?  Why are we so willing to be told how to use a piece of tech?  Why are we ok with the idea of Apple choosing what apps and functions the iPhone can do?  I understand that is just how Apple is, but why are we taking it so easily?  Why are we sheep simply obeying?

I have never liked this attitude.  I have sucked it up for 10 years now as it is really SOP of mobile phone companies.  If you didn’t know SOP is Standard Operating Procedure and if you didn’t, you have been a very lucky soul never to work in the likes of Best Buy or similar.  This SOP shit has been the main reason that I see my cell phone as just a phone, nothing else.  I cannot allow it to contain data or processes that I may truly depend on one day.  As I may need that data for something the mobile companies do not “allow.”  But now, I am wanting a smart phone of some sort and you know what, that iPhone sure is purdy.  But do I really want to have to play by more and more rules?  Seeing how Apple seems to be pulling apps or denying apps on what feels to be whims.  Why are accepting to be locked into only one carrier to only have one bit of tech?  When coverage sucks for some carriers, I should give up coverage for that bit of Shiny?

It seems that I am down to one choice in the land of phones, some sort of Blackberry, as it seems to be the most open of the lot with decent coverage but that isn’t saying much in the end.  Still, Blackberry is in the traps of only certain hardware on certain carriers.

Dammit it all, people give me a piece of tech that I can move around with and carriers make it worth while to me to be with you for allowing different tech on your system but giving me coverage.  Coverage to me is the key to the worth of a carrier.

So this started a couple days ago within my circle of friends, one of them heard that there was not going to be an upgrade path from XP to Win 7.  Most of them started to say how this was stupid of Microsoft and how it was just going to piss off more people after the Vista issues.

I disagree completely with this logic. Click here to read more.. »