John Hodgman On the Coming Geek Culture 401
An anonymous reader writes "Famous writer and minor television personality John Hodgman posits the end of the culture of Jockdom in favor of a cultural reverence for engineers, scientists and Slashdot readers: 'Jockdom is very noble. It's not deliberative. It's certainly the best way to win wars. It's the best way to motivate teams of people to fulfill a goal — not just war, but getting things done. The most important way to motivate a factory floor. But as you know, we're not as much of a manufacturing society as we were before. China and other big industrial nations are rewarding their nerds and technicians rather than creating a culture that makes fun of them — it would be wise for us to embrace the book-smart as much as our culture has traditionally embraced the street-smart, the jock-smart. I'm not saying nerds must have their revenge; I'm just saying the time for wedgies is at an end.'"
Us vs them (Score:1, Informative)
Jockdom? Wedgies?
How many stereotypes can you cram into an article. Besides, my experience of school and beyond, was more about
a very small group of borderline retards, disrupting everyone else.
Re:A solution to over population (Score:3, Informative)
Unfortunately for the geek, most chicks are still evolutionarily wired to look for the big, broad-shouldered types to mate with.
And as far as population and evolution go: he who gets the most tail, wins.
Re:Hey? (Score:2, Informative)
He's only the "I'm a PC" guy in the states though the UK gets Mitchell and Webb
Geeks wake up! (Score:3, Informative)
If you're a geek and not getting laid, then listen closely because you should be.
1. Popular culture lies. Dumb, muscle bound meat heads and frat-boys don't get the girl.
2. The feature in men that women are most attracted to: intelligence.
3. Studies show that intelligent men, over the course of their life, get to have more sex, more regularly than those who are less intelligent.
If your a geek and don't think you can get a girl, you're wrong. All those popped-collared frat boys want you to think you aren't going to be successful because, if the truth got out, THEY would never get laid. So instead of trying, you sit home and play WoW.
If you don't believe me consider this (proposed by a evolutionary biologist): women are beautiful, men are ugly. Agreed? OK. Therefore, men must be choosing mates based on looks (that's why women get more beautiful every generation) and women must be choosing mates based on other features (intelligence).
Re:Maybe people should be more well-rounded (Score:4, Informative)
That wasn't necessarily RAH, that was one of his characters.
A lot of his characters were kinda fucked up - like the guy who cloned two female versions of himself and had a three-way, or the guy who went back in time and fucked his own mother.
So, I'm just saying, you might want to take what he wrote with a big grain of salt.
After all, specialization is what got our society where it is today - without it we would all still be living the agrarian lifestyle.
Wars are won by science nowadays... (Score:3, Informative)
WWI: the tank broke the stalemate in the fields, although without it the allies would have eventually ground the Germans down (at a much higher cost though). Plus all the boring logistics stuff like convoys, canned food, etc.
WWII: the atomic bomb, the 4 engine bomber (delivery system of other weapons such as fire bombs used to level many of Germany and Japan's major cities), radar, radar jamming, navigation aids for bombing like Oboe, statistical analysis of what worked and what didn't work in the war of the Atlantic (aka the best way to kill U-boats) oh and a code breaking effort by the allies that broke Enigma (German rotor machine) and Purple (Japanese rotor machine) allowing the Allies to read enemy message traffic in near real time in some cases. The guys like Patton definitely get a lot of credit in the media/text books but it's geeks like Turing that really kicked ass.
Post WWII conflicts: many of the stalemated conflicts could be more properly termed police actions (especially in some cases as war was not declared) and in many cases you'll see a combination off stagnation/misunderstanding of the enemies real intentions/motivations has lead to serious messes.
Re:uneducated hysteria and panic (Score:3, Informative)
Manufacturing of all things, including food, is also becoming increasingly *automated*, and is nothing to be nostalgic about. Even without molecular manufacturing (nanotechnology), this trend of accelerating (in)human productivity will mean that fewer and fewer warm bodies are actually NEEDED to engineer and produce most of the necessities and luxuries of modern life, and yet everybody is still expected to somehow earn their (should-be-easier) living, doing... something... anything else.
The day is fast approaching when we'll *have* to solve the unequal DISTRIBUTION problem, as you mentioned. Either the fruits of increasingly automated production will be fairly redistributed (oh noes: soshulism), or the fortunate few who hoard the resources and means of production will find the "barbarians" at their gates.
An economy of abundance isn't that far off - the next boom after the current recession's bust, in all likelihood. Green energy is part of it.
The solution is *better* socialism, and not more of the old dog eat dog bullshit. What we need is the systemic intelligence and compassion to DISTRIBUTE a sustainable BASIC living to EVERYONE, which still preserves incentives to try to better yourself and society above your baseline by being exceptional. In the U.S., at least, this idea is known as the Basic Income Guarantee [usbig.net] (BIG), which quite a few nobel laureates have advocated for in vain thus far...