“Geek ghettoes”: how do we make sense of this issue?
Are we moving towards a world where things become so complex (by nature or by design) that only tecchies can decipher or understand them? Does this create geek ghettoes, inhabited by a marginalised master-race, who are in fact the only people who understand the systems on which our lives depend?
The issue was put forward to me in these terms:
technology continuing to advance beyond the understanding of any but the most dedicated experts leading to misunderstanding and misuse of novel technologies
Serious thought.
We dubbed this notion “geek ghettoes” and started to explore it. But Peter quickly found that term “Geek Ghettoes” has been coined to describe a physical place where marinalised geeks - the new social outcasts - hang out, such as Akihabara in Tokyo.
Do we have an issue we need a name for: the idea that technology becomes so complex most of us lose the plot? Plus a social development (interesting but not a major issue for the critical national infrastructure) that marginalised geeks gather socially or in MUDs to talk about anime and machinima in places that come to be called geek ghettoes?
Or are these two sides of the same coin?
April 23rd, 2007 at 6:23 pm
It means government needs to incentivise geeks to occasionally visit policy ghettoes and provide tech advice… Apropos Plundering the Public Sector, the current favourite mechanism (paying very large sums of money to IT consultancies with no effective oversight) has proved an expensive failure. We need both civil servants in key positions with a much stronger technology background, and ways to encourage university and business geeks to engage in public policy design without having to focus all their effort on flogging their latest projects.
April 23rd, 2007 at 6:30 pm
Perhaps I should check also - is my usage of the g-word (which I deem a mark of respect) generally acceptable, or disrespectful?
April 23rd, 2007 at 8:08 pm
I’m quite happy to be termed a geek. In fact I encourage some of my fellow geeks to stop denying their true nature and come out of the closet.
April 23rd, 2007 at 10:53 pm
You can’t really be marginalized if you run the planet.
Also, “MUDs”? How outdated. You mean Second Life, which is a testbed now for a lot of geeks and developers - as well as being an almost-mainstream entertainment zone.
wg
April 24th, 2007 at 8:09 am
Sorry. Showing my combination of age and ignorance
Running the planet is very different from being tasked with keeping it running. I dont see the geeks as holding the power - that’s a different skill set. They might be a priestly elite I suppose. Or just treated akin to the people who keep the lifts running.
What would that feel like? It might feel like you know all the answers but no-one else gets it or wants to listen to you. Sound familiar?
April 24th, 2007 at 8:48 am
If I remember rightly this was a common fear back in the 70s/80s, when being a geek actually meant that you had some knowledge/skills/tools/capabilities that were not available to masses. Nowadays programming is a commoditized activity almost entirely about building tools that put technological power into everybody’s hands. You may have heard of the World Wide Web, the largest geek ghetto on earth, or its popular developing world cousin, mobile telephony.
Luddite nonsense, IMHO. (see also, digital divide)
April 24th, 2007 at 4:44 pm
I suppose my strongest experience of
was coming across the work of Stefan Brands. His book has the clearest imaginable statement of the problem of maintaining our privacy in a world of online transactions that leave traces. Furthermore meeting him means for all sorts of reasons he’s someone whose intention on my behalf I’m happy to trust. So if he’s right that he has cracked this problem, I want public services to use his techniques.
BUT…from chapter 2 of his book I dont even understand the symbols he uses, let alone the equations and the overall feasibility of what he proposes. This proves to me that in future we will have to trust people whose work we do not understand (rather like we fly in planes without understanding the principles of aeronautics).
April 25th, 2007 at 8:13 am
On the etymology of geek:
(http://www.bartleby.com/61/0/G0070000.html)
…The circus sideshow is the source of the word geek, “a performer who engaged in bizarre acts, such as biting the head off a live chicken.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geek)
The social and rather derogatory connotations of the word make it particularly difficult to define. The difference between the terms “geek” and “nerd” is widely disputed, as the latter might be identified as someone who is unusually intelligent, and the former as someone who has an eccentric interest towards a certain category or topic.
April 25th, 2007 at 8:56 am
So in fact, it’s maths geek ghettoes you’re worried about
April 25th, 2007 at 10:54 am
Yes, crypto is where this hit me strongest. But there’s also a real digital divide between those comfortable with online social networking, and those who “Dont Get It” - eg in school social life etc.
April 27th, 2007 at 11:18 am
But:
- you do not have to understand crypto to understand that an algorithm that withstands the world’s brightest cryptanalysts banging on it is a better bet than one that doesn’t, just as you do not have to understand aeronautics, you just have to trust the *safety engineers* who examine the plane and pronounce it flightworthy.
- and in order to trust the safety engineers you trust the government agency that employs them, checks their credentials, and tests their knowledge.
It seems to me that we trust things we don’t understand by moving up levels of abstraction until we reach one we *do* understand, and then it’s just turtles all the way down.
wg