Sunday, October 18, 2009

Famous Nerds

The nerd was always an enigmatic organism. A being that lurked in the bedroom shadows of social acceptability, hiding his spotty face from the light with soft white fingers. To be a nerd was to condemn oneself to a life of unattractive stereotypes and ridicule. It meant hovering at the bottom of the abyss of cool and banishment from social nirvana. It heralded exile from the Olympus of golden teenage rock and jock gods. But the nerd ignored the hasty backpedaling of mainstream society - he was oblivious to the subconscious cultural fear that the highly intelligent had the ability to dominate. Now, that fear has come alive. We live in a world where geeks crawl through the streets in expensive black cars and suave dark suits. We are stranded in an alternate reality where polished loafers* reflect the unsuspecting faces of the masses. In our age of technology, the nerd is rubbing pale hands together over the fates of economy, ecology, technology and ultimately, the future.

Earlier I was blogging about sexy young nerds. Well, here are some young-ish, not very sexy, nerds, my subjective list of the top 5 nerds that control your life, now that your life is THE INTERNET.**

Larry Page & Sergey Brin
Profile: Co-founders of Google. Presidents of Products and Technology of Google.
Facts: Larry’s first computer was an Exidy Sorcerer. The Sorcerer boasted 2 MHz processor speed and 8K RAM. That's as fast as an old calculator. Sergey liked puzzles when he was a kid.
Ages: 36
Nerd Rating: *****
Product Addiction Rating: *****

Evan Williams
Profile: Founder of Twitter, Pyra Labs, Blogspot, Blogger.
Fact: Evan likes vegetables.
Age: 37
Nerd Rating: ****
Product Addiction Rating: ***


Tom Anderson
Profile: Co-founder of Myspace. Public relations invention. Not really Tom Anderson since News Corp took over his Myspace profile.
Fact: Tom was raided by the FBI for hacking into a bank in 1985.
Age: 30-something. Not as young as he'd like.
Nerd Rating: **
Product Addiction Rating: ****

Chad Hurley, Steve Chen & Jawed Karim
Profile: Co-founders of YouTube
Fact: The idea for YouTube was created at a dinner party.
Ages: 33, 31, 30
Nerd Rating: **
Product Addiction Rating: *****

Jimmy Wales
Profile: Co-founder of Wikipedia
Fact: Jimmy lives in a 'grandma' house.
Age: 43
Nerd Rating: ****
Product Addication Rating: *****

*Not all nerds wear loafers
**May not be entirely true
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3 comments:

  1. CarlaOctober 19, 2009 at 8:45 AM

    haha this was hilarious, its a bit of a worry now that the Internet has really become part of daily lives, for pretty much everything! I have already used it to read the newspaper. check my emails, find a lost dentists number and work out which tram to catch....and i've only been awake 10 minutes, and didn't move out of bed once.

    Thanks for the nerd adventure!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Steph TehOctober 19, 2009 at 7:58 PM

    Hi Carla, you're welcome and thanks for the comment. I could name a hundred more influential Internet nerds, alas time and space (and reader boredom) would not permit me to. There's Mark Zuckerberg, Kevin Rose, Matt Mullenweg, Pete Cashmore...Rob Manuel...

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousNovember 3, 2009 at 3:31 PM

    Hi Steph,
    I found the writing on this post to be incredibly stylish and funny...you may just be a nerd yourself. Note: I think you've been a bit generous on the 'nerd ratings'...Come on, these guys are all five-star super-nerds!

    Yes, our world has now been manipulated and constructed by the nerds; this is a good thing. Nerds like Barak Obama are intelligent; 'cool, toughguy cowboys' like George W. Bush are about as smart as a dolphin who has sniffed too much glue.

    One day may we be known as the 'nerd planet', and with this moniker, all of our previous social challenges born from ignorance and stupidity will be transgressed.

    ReplyDelete

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