Social Creatures

It seems to me that geeks, despite our reputations, are very social creatures. We get a bad reputation because, like anyone, we prefer to be social with others that have similar interests but geeks happen to be a rather small minority, making this more difficult than it might be for others. As a result, we often get a reputation as loners since we don’t always mesh well with the larger population, but the same can generally be said about almost anyone. People, in general, prefer to connect with others with which they share common interests and when they find themselves in the minority, they tend to isolate themselves.

As an illustration of my point, I point out what technology has done in the last few decades. Most of the greatest advancements in technology were improved means of communication and interaction. Recent technological innovations have created more powerful means of communication than the world has ever seen. It has created the biggest communities and social networks ever conceived and it has proven that millions of heads are better than one. As examples, I cite Usenet/newsgroups, e-mail, IM, cell phones, message boards/forums, talkback on news articles, podcasts, blogs, Flikr, Skype, Amazon, eBay, Google with its recommendation based view of links, Napster and it’s progeny, Friendster, Facebook (the Friendster for college students) and massively multiplayer on-line games. All these things either facilitate communication or enhance or even create communities (or both) and, interestingly, almost all were created by Computer Science majors and programmers and were originally used solely by geeks until the rest of our social species realized how great they are.

The same thing happened with the telephone when it was first invented. People thought that it was too impersonal to be considered a viable means of communication but once they tried it, the world was sold. Today, people feel comfortable enough with them that over a billion people feel the need to carry a phone with them everywhere they go to stay in touch with friends, family, and colleagues. That’s more than 1/6 of the world’s population; even more if you only count industrialized countries. The proportion grows larger still when not counting children although they are increasingly likely to have phones of their own. This is what geeks have given the world: the popularity of computers that has brought them into nearly every American home was not due to some really cool game or a particularly compelling web site. It was the potential to communicate with friends and colleagues through e-mail and IM that made having a computer and an internet connection worthwhile. It was also the ability to participate in and contribute to the macrocosm of on-line communities that attracted non-geeks.

I myself have been using ICQ since before AOL even had IM let alone before they bought Mirabilis (the creator of ICQ, the first IM client) and before that I was using e-mail like IM complete with multiple simultaneous conversations. It was like slow IM when IM came about I thought, “why didn’t I think of that, I already do it on a daily basis!” It took another 4-5 years before the average consumer started to IM their friends rather than pick up the phone or turn to the Internet to keep in touch with distant relatives through photo albums and e-mail. I have seen statistics that say that on-line banking and using financial software and working from home are often cited as some of the most common reasons for buying a computer yet rank near the bottom as tasks for which people actually use their computers. Instead they are replaced by IM, e-mail, comparison shopping, gaming, blogging, etc. I find it interesting that even among those who don’t explicitly purchase a computer because of the communal aspect, a high percentage apparently spend a lot of time taking advantage of it. So in the end, geeks are not so different from everyone else. They are different to the same extent that hot-rodders are different from quilters. They love to get together and talk about what they love (while having the advantage of being able to create the tools that facilitate that desire) and when they can’t, the go off and enjoy their hobby alone, like everyone else…

…but that’s just my opinion.