Introducing Geeks, Culture, and Storytelling
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a geek was originally a āsimpletonā or a ādupeā, but that definition no longer holds. Geeks now exist in the general public view as people who are knowledgeable and obsessively interested in some highly specialised area such as comic books, science fiction and fantasy, science, role-playing games, video games, and computer technology (Feineman, 2005; McCain, Gentile, & Campbell, 2015; Woo, 2018). Some of these interests are highly correlated so that a geek can be a science fiction fan, an avid payer of games, as well as a computer programmer. In popular1 discourse, āgeekā is often used to refer to someone highly knowledgeable (sometimes to the point of obsession) about technology, especially computer technology (Bergman & Lambert, 2010). Some geeks focus on computing, while for others computing is one element in a range of geeky interests; in this work, I will focus on the computing side of geek culture.
While the geek is now identified and represented as tech-savvy, geeks are also popularly stereotyped (sometimes even by persons who self-identify as geeks) as ignorant of or indifferent to other important aspects of social and cultural life, such as etiquette, intimacy, and fashion, to name just three. Some might argue that these traits of social awkwardness are more applicable to ānerdsā: while there is an overlap between concepts of nerd and geek (Goto, 1997; Kendall, 2000, 2011; Woo, 2018), I will use geek in this book as the overarching term; most of what I write about geeks could be applied to nerds. Debate on which of these two terms is more appropriate is not only outside the scope of my work here but holds little interest for me. Nerds are obsessed with knowledge, often obscure knowledge; they often narrate their childhoods as misfits; they are often obsessed with details of technology or collections of comics or games. All of this holds for geeks. So, when I use the term āgeekā, I want you, the reader, to imagine that what I say about the geek is almost always applicable to the nerd.
As discussed by Woo (2018), the term āgeekā can signify different identities and practices depending on who is using it, with the difference residing both in areas of interest and in degrees of interest. Computer geeks have a strong sense of collective identity and see themselves as belonging to various kinds of community. Both geeks and non-geeks imagine variously firm/porous boundaries that separate geeks from non-geeks. Self-identified geeks counter the negative connotations that people from the wider non-geek society have associated with geeks, thereby validating geek identity. As we live in an increasingly networked society of ubiquitous digital technology, and especially with the entry of tech billionaires as the newest stars in the celebrity firmament, being geek has come to take on a more positive image than what it was 40 years ago at the dawn of the personal computer (PC) era. The kind of geek I focus on is the computer geek, also sometimes referred to as a hacker. Hacking covers a broad spread of practices and identities and is an area of ongoing research and debate (Jordan, 2017), and my aim is not to add to that debate. For my purposes, the hacker is a person skilled in creating and/or modifying software and software-controlled objects of various kinds. There is an overlap between the hacker as a software coder and the geek in the sense of a computer geek as can be seen in the work of both Coleman (2012) and Kelty (2008). Moreover, in much of the body of popular literature and media representations that I will discuss in later chapters, a hacker is equal to a geek. I use both terms but favour the use of geek more than hacker because the public imagination of āhackerā is overburdened by ideas of computer misuse and digital crime.
To be a geek is to carry a social and cultural label and to do so is to have an identity. When mathematicians or logicians talk about identity, they have in mind A being the same as B in functional terms, so that A and B behave the same no matter what inputs we make to either. When we talk of identity in human relations, we are dealing with how to negotiate a sense of who an individual is, which groups she belongs to, how she responds to how other people view her as a social being, and with which groups they associate her (Jenkins, 2014; Lawler, 2013). So socio-cultural identity differs from logical identity in that socio-cultural identity is fluid and lacks the certainties of identity as found in logic and mathematics.
While there is some overlap between social and cultural identity, it is helpful to distinguish between the two. Social identity refers to how you are placed in real social relations and structures, such as social class or gender, or as a parent. The existence of the social relations and structures that inform a social identity are recognised by most people in any society. Often there is an element of inequality in these social relations and structures. Social identity can be assigned at birth, or it can be achieved or assumed later in life. Cultural identity refers to a personās sense of belonging to distinct groups. Cultural identities are almost infinitely varied and are constantly being re-imagined. Sometimes a cultural identity can put a āglossā on social identity, as when someone with the social identity of a woman (or man) declares that they are feminist. Many kinds of ethnic identities are both social and cultural. Another way to draw a working distinction between social and cultural identities is to think of a social identity as having a relatively objective existence in the sense that, say, social class exists in a way that is not entirely reducible to what individuals think or desire regarding their own social class. Cultural identities, on the other hand, have stronger elements of voluntarism to them in that a person makes choices about kinds of practices, uses of language, or working with different kinds of symbols to craft a (cultural) identity and a sense of belonging to a cultural group. While there is wider scope for crafting cultural than social identities, both kinds of identities are sites of struggle and are shaped by unequal power relations.
The identities of people who are secure as members of powerful groups carry positive value, while identities assumed by or ascribed to less powerful groups carry lower value. Most people seek to construct positive identities for themselves because most people seek to feel secure and valued in themselves and society, but there is no getting around the fact that some identities carry more value in society than others (Lemert, 1994). Therein lies the fundamental contradiction at the heart of social and cultural identity. Everybody has several identities, but not everybody has the same set of identities. And identities are structured unequally. Gender and age are the two most fundamental differentiating social identities; and to these, we can add others such as class, nation, ethnic group, and sexuality, among others. We can usefully think of social identity as a network of different social positions along axes of, say, gender and class (but not only these). In so doing, we shoul...