I am a geek, and this is my week.
I considered entering the Global Geek Week video contest, but, in the end, I came to the conclusion that I'm not that good at vlogging, the prize would probably be relatively useless to anyone living outside the US (like me), and that a nice lengthy blog post would do just as good a job at conveying the thoughts I would have presented in the video.
So, the obvious question is, what is a geek or nerd ? I think it is fair to consider these terms synonymous: some people see differences in the nuance of the terms, and the origins are, obviously, distinct, but nowadays, they mean essentially the same things. Originally, geek is an insult applied by non-geek teenagers to peers who are actually intelligent, know how to read, and get better grades at school. The term is most popularly applied to boys with no social life worth mentioning since these are that tiny bit more alien and scary to the kids that hang around at train stations and smoke all day. Nowadays, the term is most commonly associated with the type that spends all day in front of the computer.
Most of the kids insulted as geeks are actually, or at least potentially, geeks in the way that I'd use the word, which is, I believe, a way that most geeks, at least computer geeks, on the internet would agree to. Geeks are intelligent people that think for themselves and get excited about using their own intellect at the risk of venturing outside the social norm. Geeks are not only intelligent. They actually enjoy it.
As per this definition, quite a lot of people deserve the label “geek.” Let's start with the usual suspects: