Geek: /gēk/ (Noun) 1. A carnival performer often billed as a wild man.  2. A person often of an intellectual bent who is disliked.  3. An enthusiast or expert especially in a technological field or activity. – Merriam-Webster Dictionary

July 13th is Embrace Your Geek Day.  There has been a lot of confusion about what it means to be a geek.  Is it the same as being a nerd or a dork?  How about a dweeb?  Do we all really know what those terms mean, or have we largely lived off of stereotypes we’ve seen in movies?

Or have the meanings changed over time?

The dictionary definitions for geek, nerd and dork all tend to lean toward using words like inept, lacking social skills, or unattractive to describe them – all holdovers of stereotypes from around thirty years ago when movies began indoctrinating us about what it means to be socially awkward.

Revenge of the Nerds made its movie debut in 1984, introducing us to a class of people who were incredibly smart, but socially incapable of holding it together. Nerds were portrayed as clumsy, gangly, poorly dressed and incredibly shy around members of the opposite sex.   Everyone else, of course, was knee-deep in partying, posing with our self-important cliques, ditching class and getting sexually involved with someone they shouldn’t.   Yeah…

Every kid who tinkered with his Commodore 64 at the time, who stayed home at night to learn COBOL or Fortran was immediately put into this category, and socially treated like a Casey Anthony trial juror.  If in addition to your technological prowess your idea of haute couture was to mix patterns between your pants and shirt (and maybe even your socks oh my!,) oh it just went downhill from there.  Life was a banquet all around you, and you were the gristle on the side of some jock’s plate.

I’m not bitter.

At some point, the kids who threw balls at the heads of the socially inept began to see some pretty cool games being marketed for those Commodores, put down their round rubber weapons, and tentatively picked up joysticks.  To play.  With each other, that is, not with the nerds, who went on to buy the first Macintosh computers and discovered computerized role-playing games.  The thick bully-filled line that once separated the nerd and the non-nerd, however, had begun to thin up a bit.

As more socially-inclined kids began talking amongst each other about the video games they liked, word got out that it was okay to spend hours at home destroying asteroids or jousting on the back of an ostrich.  Video arcades boomed with the always promising element of meeting girls and competing for best score, drawing more boys out of their rooms to stand before loud, clanging, beeping, musical screens for hours and hours.  This time, right next to the nerds, marveling at their ability to go through level after level of Donkey Kong.  The geek was born, as it suddenly became cool to be absolutely into technology.

Nowadays, the term geek belongs to anyone who has an incredible interest in just about anything.  We can still “geek out” on any PS3 game, but chances are we might also geek out to a football team or HBO’s True Blood series.  These days, the amount of time a kid spends interested in technology would’ve accounted for at least a dozen middle school wedgies a day in the 80′s.  Their use of technology today far outweighs that of almost any long-ago nerd.

The term nerd has all but disappeared from our lexicon – when’s the last time your heard it being used?  Many of us aspire to have enough time to geek out on any number of interests, can effectively balance a somewhat healthy social life along with our interests, and can figure out how to match a shirt with a proper pair of dress slacks.   So if nerds don’t exist, and the rest of us can move in and out of society’s greater ranks without a child pointing and guffawing at us, what happened to the nerds?  What happened to our badly dressed introverts, whose brains appear to have made a connection with the Matrix prior to gestation?  This is where the term dorks come in.

Yesterday’s nerds are today’s dorks.  We had to make up a whole new definition, if only to be able to have some semblance of self-respect after all of the technology loving we borrowed from the nerds.  C’mon, we download and install open source code from places like WordPress, install browser extensions as we enjoy the beta test of Google+, and many of us have taken a swing or two at coding with HTML.  We are more socially graceful nerds, and we know how to dress.

Dorks are everything a nerd used to be seen as, without the technophilia; awkward and funny to watch, but without the useful game skills that might still melt a gamer girl’s heart.  They’ll never amount to much, right?  Or, are we about to see, once again, the emergence of a new social-techno savvy generation, that embraces the term dork and makes it all their own?

Maybe this time next year, I’ll be sharing the joy of embracing your inner dork…

Article first published on Technorati.  If you’d like to enjoy it one more time, feel free to visit them!

But my friend, have you conquered the past?

April 11th is 8-Track Player Day. If you are over 40 you definitely remember those heady days of the 8-Track player.  As well as roller skates, Daisy Dukes, head bands and Afros for all.  Brings a tear to my eye, realizing there might still be photos circulating of me in those days…

Yes, you can!

Did you know that you can still purchase working Realistic 8 Track players?  Why not pick up a piece of history, and see how many conversations it starts!  There’s nothing that says “I got it all” like having what was, too!  Here’s an old Radio Shack commercial to help get you in the mood…

Three things you can do with your brandy new/old 8-Track player…

1.  Got iPod? If you’re worried about how your 8-Track will integrate with your modern audiophile lifestyle, here’s an article from Unplggd.com on how to convert your existing 8-track player into an iPod speaker dock.  Everything old is new again!

2.  We got us a convoy! The idea of showing off your car’s brandy new 8-Track cause some sense of arousal?  How about going whole hog and adapting your new/old device to become that other scion of the 70′s?  That’s right, you can turn your 8-Track player into a CB Radio!

3. Take it mobile! You’re a runner.  I get it – you enjoy the wind in your hair, and the steady swish-swish of your track pants.  Why not turn your incredible new/old toy into a Jurassic Walkman?  It just might stun the muggers into laughter, keeping you safe (You’re welcome!)

You too can be a retro warrior!  So dust off those roller skates, find that old head band, and do what every American adult loves to do – embarrass the Hell out of your children!

March 15th is Everything You Know is Wrong Day. It is a reminder that we ought to take the time to suck in new information as it arrives (especially these days,) and embrace when we discover what we “know” is downright WRONG, either due to previous mis-education or simply because technology keeps changing everything. It’s time to make sure we stay entrenched as a member of the most intelligent species on Planet Earth.

Changes, changes…

How many times have you sat back and heard your grandparents tell stories of the way things used to be? Of how all of the magic surrounding us emerged on the scene? I’ve often stopped and imagined how much of my grandparent’s world has changed, moved on, or been cast aside. Relativity. Space flight. Geosynchronous orbit. Nuclear power. Social upheaval and social media. Microwave ovens. Cable television. DNA sequencing. Genetically modified foods. Weather forecasting. Charlie Sheen.

So much of what we all used to “know,” what we considered to be fact, what we relied on in our daily decisions has become broken crockery by the roadside.

What we know has changed…

It seems that almost every year there is an advance made somewhere that affects a technology everywhere. Using computers and internet databases, historians have been able to draw from mountains of data to paint far more accurate (and humanizing) life accounts of notable figures from our past.

Ancient and severely damaged documents such as the Dead Sea Scrolls, long abandoned as illegible, have been re-assembled and digitally enhanced to provide a more complete (and sometimes confusing) picture of our great faiths. Disparate technologies are being brought together by brilliant minds to create almost magical things, such as organic digital storage, self-lighting walls, holographic newscasts, flying cars and the Victoria’s Secret “Body by Victoria” Bra.

We’ll have our turn…

If you think your grandparents have been getting a little lost trying to keep up with things in the last 20 years or so, wait to see what happens in the next 20 years! In almost every aspect of our lives, what we as individuals or a society thought was crystal-clear has been shown to be fuzzy at best. Everything we thought we knew, what we hold near and dear, is being questioned. We’re discovering everything we think just might be wrong.

Social Media as impetus for inner change

Twitter is unlearning me. I click on the links provided to me from individuals from a variety of backgrounds and interests, and am exposed to the news they feel might be of interest to all. I read articles and papers from psychological, agricultural, astronomical, historical and even mathematical journals, just to name a few. Because of the wonderful hyperlinks steadily moving under my eye, I’ve found that there’s been an awful lot of incorrect information jangling around in my brain. I’m removing what is out-dated, and painting a new picture of the World around me as I go.

Did you know….

• Sailors in Columbus’ day already knew the Earth was a globe.
• We actually use 100% of our brain’s capabilities.
• The Pilgrims of Plymouth never wore black, tall hats or buckled shoes.
• Hair and fingernails do not grow after we die.
• Abner Doubleday did not invent Baseball.
• Napoleon Bonaparte was a man of average height.
• Humpty Dumpty is never referenced in the story as being an egg.
• Cracking your knuckles does not cause arthritis or other inflammatory conditions.
• A bull cannot see the color red.
• The Roman Catholic concept of the Immaculate Conception does not refer to Jesus himself.
• Sugar doesn’t make a kid act more hyperactive.
• The “Coriolis Effect” does not determine the direction of your toilet’s water flow.
• Nobody knows what the original forbidden fruit was.
• The term “theory” does not, nor has it ever when used in Science, insinuate doubt in the veracity of the concept.
• One tongue from the next is not the same with regard to taste, or which “zone” tastes what.
• Thomas Edison did not invent the light bulb.
• Shaving does not cause our hair to grow back either thicker or more dark.
• Henry Ford did not invent either the automobile or the assembly line.
• Being out in the cold does not increase your chances of catching one.
• All bats have eyes and are capable of sight.

Confused? Pissed?

I chose the above because many of us (including myself at one time) held an opposing viewpoint, until proven otherwise. I could cite for the reader all of the underlying sources disproving these popular notions, but figured the information is readily available for anyone really interested in it.

The Singularity

Because the pulling together of so much information has caused (and continues to cause) such sweeping change everywhere, some suggest that we’re rapidly approaching a Singularity — a period of time scientifically when our knowledge level and abilities, whether through integrated discovery or technological convergence, begin to explode around us. How could such a thing happen?

We are an incredibly intelligent species; however, our brain power is only so limited. Which is why we find supercomputers to be of such great help in accomplishing complicated tasks. We continue to make great strides in artificial intelligence, and it is only a matter of time before we begin to be able to more fully converse our needs to the computers, letting them do the heavy lifting in unison for the rest of us.

Socializing Supercomputers

We currently share our scientific and sociological discoveries by reading about them or attending lectures, by purchasing licensing rights and making agreements over days, weeks or months. What if one day our working computers talked real-time amongst themselves, sharing all emerging technological advances in all areas from around the Globe, computing in micro-seconds the usefulness of all that is known thus far? When this happens, will we be able to keep up?

My list of bulleted items above were based on long-held beliefs and myths held for great periods of time by large groups of people due to misinformation or misconception. I wonder, when we reach that apex of advancement and a technological Singularity finally occurs, will we be adding to that list:

• Humans are not the most intelligent species on Planet Earth.

Until that happens, I will sit back and enjoy the steady flow of info and comraderie I find here… I meant me and you, not the computer…