In the spring of '96, when this column was in its youth, an enlightening, if ultimately inconsequential, thing happened. It was the result of this columnist's oft-misunderstood sense of humor being yet again misinterpreted.
In response to US Attorney General Janet Reno's announcement of a US Justice Department commando task force to fight lawlessness on the Internet, I jokingly suggested the creation of what I called Media Rant's anti-bullshit delta bravo cyberteam, an anti-politician and media-trained cadre at the ready to counter lies, distortions about, and efforts to censor the Net and the Web. My sci-fi-inspired fantasy included a cadre recruited to "read and monitor waves of nuclear bullshit from the mainstream media about perverts, hackers, thieves, pornographers, and terrorists online," as well as such unlikely comrades as Rosie O'Donnell and the Sucksters.
I envisioned this geek force answering the dunderheaded editorial writers railing about new media and the demise of civilization, helping fend off censorious politicians and supporting embattled librarians. Members could point out in their own communities the new opportunities for community, education, and politics the Net presented.
I had meant the column to be humorous and thought-provoking, but I was shocked to find thousands of earnest volunteers writing from across the globe, ready to fight for their medium and proudly claim their identity as geeks. They wanted patches and IDs.
The idea of a fight-back digital force was immensely appealing to these brainy - if gullible - volunteers, as was the idealistic notion of telling the truth about the Net. They were eager to take on the people in authority who had been tormenting them their whole lives and misrepresenting their culture.
"When do I begin?" wrote Lundren from Sweden. "Just tell me where to go, what to do."
"Finally," messaged Stan, "an army I want to join."
Hundreds of readers sent their bios and email addresses and offered to form groups in their cities or countries.
But this noble effort wasn't to be. It was an idea whose time hadn't come, a notion more mature than the culture it wanted to help. The posts of the Geek Force (as it came to be called) volunteers were overwhelmed by the narcissistic and mostly adolescent flamers who dominated HotWired at the time, self-styled cyberguerillas who celebrated their own free speech while enthusiastically depriving others of theirs.
Nobody at HotWired, including me, had the time or the stomach for waging the battle required to fend off these hostile, sometimes disturbed young men and actually create and direct such a force. So in an ironic reenactment of the age-old geek drama, the volunteers were ridiculed and chased and bullied off their new site.
The experience was powerful, nonetheless. The flamers did plenty of damage, but they seemed fragile, almost anachronistic, the product of that particular moment.
The idea of geek pride was much bigger than they were; it was stirring, ascending. The rise of the geeks has an epic feeling. It is the perfect social and political movement to emerge from the millennial intersection of the Internet, the rise of the digital age, increasingly global pop culture, and the collapse of repressive structures like communism and apartheid.
Geeks are at the center of this moment, poised to become a powerful, visible community for the first time.
On the Internet, geeks are no longer outsiders; they run the place. They understand it better than anyone and, because of their tortured history, value it the most. Unlike many trendy digital movements, geekdom isn't just about the young. Aging geeks are feeling especially elated about their new community - understandably so, after years of isolation. Until I began emailing geeks regularly, I never quite grasped how powerful an experience it is for the intellectual who is disapproved of to stumble into a vast and welcoming community for the first time.
Perhaps the most striking aspect of this was the way the once-despised and disapproved-of were proud to wear the label "geek" and to fight for what they perceived as geek values: freedom, individuality, truth, community, and the power of technology to do good as well as harm.
I had the sense that all had first-hand experience with bullies of one sort or another and had lost sometimes-bitter struggles with authority. Most seemed to have labored to find their place in the world. Quarrelsome and curious, they were suckers for new and interesting ideas.
They differ from the nerds who built the Internet and the digital culture and who are, in traditional media, still so closely associated with it. If nerds are antisocial, geeks are hypnotized by the social applications of technology. If nerds are mostly male and young, geeks are as likely to be women as men, older as well as younger. If nerds did the solitary work of building the technology of the era, geeks cluster in packs, building communities all over the virtual place. If nerds are apolitical, geeks are anxious to build a new kind of political and social order.
After years of standing outside the tent and looking in, living beyond "mainstream" social and political values, geeks are transfixed by the idea of connecting with others in a new kind of community.
This column also appears in HotWired's Synapse section, where technology and culture connect.
