This piece, When Nerds Collide by Meredith L. Patterson, is easily the best explanation of what’s been going on with nerds that I’ve ever read, and I’ve been watching this slow erosion of what we created and the growing attack on who we are since the early 2000s; it started slow, but like all exponential growth, it tends to look slow at first, but then suddenly seems like it’s exploding around you.
The question is, what’s next? I guess human nature doesn’t change much, and the ultimate issue is that, as weirdos, we will always be by-definition weird and thus shunned. Yet it would seem that most human progress relies heavily on weirdos for innovation. Can the norms continue to innovate on their own? Some can, but I think most can’t. Yet we can hardly threaten them to leave us alone or we’ll stop helping them; they won’t listen or believe anyway.
