Hardly a week goes by without someone either a acquaintance, work colleague, friend or family member telling me.
” Mike you’re such a geek”.
This comment normally comes after i’ve spent the previous few minutes trying to explain to them something I found interesting. Whether it be a documentary or TV program i’ve seen (normally on Discovery or National Geographic) or maybe something i’ve read/found on the Internet.
It could be they asked me how to do something technology related (or on a number of other subjects) and i’ve gone off on a rambling explanation including links to websites if they wanted to know more.
The truth is I can’t help myself.
These people might find my conversation or answer to their question boring and therefore label me as a geek, but I really don’t care.
I’m a Geek.
I have quite a childish mind, in that I very often find myself looking at something and thinking I wonder how that works and that’s where the research starts.
I also love learning, I want to know how things work or understand why things happen or have happened.
Of course like any good geek I love sci-fi, this is where the dreamer side to my childish brain comes in.
But like the great John Lennon once said
“You may say that i’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one”.
Without dreamers the human race would’ve died out not long after we started.
I’m pretty sure thousands of years ago (8,000 BC apparently, but definitely by 3,500 BC) when early man (or woman) invented the wheel their fellow early humans looked at them and said.
“look at geek boy (or girl) being all geeky. That’s boring let’s go and stare at the cave drawings”
I might be a dreamer but I unfortunately don’t have the talent to create anything meaningful or helpful. But thankfully there are many amongst the geekhood who do have the talent and drive to push the human race forward.
As the world becomes more & more reliant on technology the geeks of the world will become more powerful. But rest assured we geeks will use this power only for good, it’s a unwritten rule of the geekhood not to use our geekyness for evil purposes. (Unlike the League of Nerds who want to enslave all non Nerds)
(Ok, i’ve seem to have gone off on a tangent back to my geekyness.)
I’m happy to be a geek, although it does get expensive. Too many gadgets and not enough time to use them.
I know the people who call me a geek aren’t trying to hurt me or belittle me. In fact I think they’re probably jealous that I can get so much pleasure out of seemingly boring subjects.
However I do think there’s a inner geek in everyone.
Some of the people who call me a geek try and talk to me about cooking, gardening or the latest book by their favourite author etc. I have little interest in these topics, so it would be easy for me to call these people geeks when they talk with such passion & knowledge about the subject.
But that’s not the geek way.
I’m a geek and in time they might also realise that they are also geeks.
I’ll leave you with another line from John Lennon’s Imagine which I direct to the non geeks.
“I hope someday you’ll join us, And the world will be as one”
(I can’t believe I wrote that last couple of lines either, I told you I’m a dreamer)
Take care
Mike