The Geek Virus

Every once in a while it is good to reflect on the fact that there was a time before the smart phone, even a time long before the cell phone itself.  There was a time before America Online.  There was a time when there was no Food Network, and no celebrity chefs.  There was a time before Twitter and Facebook and even Friendster.  This was a time when Men were Men and Women were still way smarter than Men.  This was a time when Presidential blow jobs were a big deal and how many cable channels you got was nearly as important as what kind of car you drove.  Technology was great, and everyone knew it was making their lives dandier, but it was still the domain of the Geek.  The Geeks tended it, nurtured it, and occasionally used it to improve the way we built widgets, but they were still just Geeks.  It was a time when the world was aware the technology was a growing industry and spreading rapidly, but still, I don't think anyone saw this coming. At least not all the way back in 1990.

There's no way to tell you when it happened--because I'm not sure anyone knows--but at some point in the last two decades a guy with a pocket protector must have bit a girl in skinny jeans and high heels.  It's the only explanation for the Geek Virus' transmission into the rest of the species.  Once introduced, this predilection for technology and interactive databases spread through the general population like herpes on Prom Night.  Suddenly cell phones went from the things that a few drug dealers and businessmen-who-didn't-really-know-how-to-use-them kept in their cars, to must-have accessories for every creature with opposable thumbs and someone to call.  Kids on playgrounds started comparing the size of their internet connections.  Mothers started fretting over their daughter's screename because it used the word "Cutie" or "Sparkly".  And this was just the beginning.  Over time this virulent desire for gadgetry and reliable information access and transfer has mutilated much of our species into data-drooling zombies.  

   Technology has penetrated our day to day lives to the point that being a geek has gone from being the guy who spends his whole day in front of a computer and his whole night staring up at space to being that same guy but without all the terrible stigma and abusive peer judgement.  The geeks, virulent monkeys though they may be, have become cool by virtue of all the technology they implement and improve in our lives.  And technology has been embraced by everyone--except the Amish, who, without their beards, would be the least cool people on the planet.  Take 42 seconds and try to think of a group, an industry, a hobby, or a way of life that has not embraced the world of the internet and the devices that hang off of it.  Got any?  No.  I already dealt with the Amish.  Got any now?  I didn't think so.  As Apple's marketing team so brilliantly coined it, "There's an app for that."  

Into nature and hiking?  Okay, use GPS coordinates and Google Maps to trace your route and mark spots you found interesting along the way.  Hunting?  How about a series of cameras with motion sensors to track game while you're away from the woods?  Cooking?  How about cookbooks that hold hundreds of thousands of recipes, will read them to you, generate shopping lists based on the ingredients, as well as track potential substitute ingredients based on your dietary needs?  I'm also pretty sure that sharing recipes over the internet with the rest of the world is more efficient than hand copied index cards swapped among your friends.  Into sports?  Then you're probably catching scores or even watching games on your cell phone.  Or maybe you're playing in a fantasy sports league online.  Or watching the game with a few hundred thousand of your closest strangers.  Maybe you're into cars.  Can't. imagine. how. the. internet. could. help.  You're an artist, you say?  Then get on Etsy.  Then get on eBay.  Get a website.  Sell your art.  Stop starving. 

The simple fact is that the technology that used to be merely the wet dream of geeks who played text-based role playing games on the early internet is now a reality and it's being embraced on a level that is unprecedented in human history.  As Google CEO Eric Schmidt pointed out in a recent address to the American Society of News Editors, Between the dawn of humanity and 2003, roughly 5 Exabytes of information were created. (An Exabyte is roughly a million gigabytes.) We generate that amount nearly every two days now.

Even if only 5% of that data is original (and I think that's being way too conservative) and if only .0001% of THAT is pertinent or interesting to you personally, that's still 25 Gigabytes worth of data generated every two days that you might find useful or enjoyable.  That's 4.5 Terrabytes a year.  It used to be you might ask someone if they had a cellphone or an e-mail address.  Then you might ask them if they had a screename.  Now you might reasonably ask if they're on Twitter, and if they aren't on Facebook, why not?  At some point in the not so distant future you might find yourself staring at someone as if they were Amish because they just told you they didn't have a website and content delivery system of their own.