Why nerds and technology go hand in hand
Throughout my years of watching movies and selling electronics, I’ve noticed a trend that I find a bit amusing, and that might help explain how we *cough* “know” who the nerds are… Technology. Say what you want about nerds, nerds and tech are almost interchangeable terms. Regardless of whatever else they’re a fan of, nerds LOVE their tech and are often early adopters of the latest technological advances.
People (and by people, I mean in general and not specifically), foster a love/hate/fear relationship with technology. When we first receive a new technological device, we love it. We love our cars, computers, cell phones, tablets, cameras, and all our gadgets and merry little knick-knacks that accompany modern life. Once our device doesn’t work *exactly* the way we want it to, we get angry. We fear life without them and we fear life with them. People often take out their frustrations on innocent pieces of electronic equipment. (I once threw my cell phone across a room when I was fighting with my then-boyfriend. The phone miraculously survived.)
In the 1,000+ movies I’ve seen in my life, a common theme emerges. Even in some of the older movies made, “fear of technology” is a running theme. In the first science fiction film, Metropolis (1927), a robot woman destroys the city. In Modern Times (1936), Charlie Chaplin, a factory worker, has a nervous breakdown due to his high-stress technological work. In a range of more recent movies like the Terminator series, the Transformers series and I, Robot (2004), just to name a few, technology is a threat. Technology rises up against carnal creators (or mere humans) and destroys society.
Humanity in these movies is also partially saved by technology. The Terminator’s John Conner is repeatedly rescued by technology as it seeks to destroy him. The Deceptacons, usually military rather than automotive robots, wreak vast amounts of destruction on Earth as Optimus Prime (an 18-wheeler) and his Autobots (assorted cars, trucks, and forms of civilian transportation) save us. This also shows a slight fear of a military invasion, a concern that the war has ruined our society.
Perhaps one of the biggest reasons we fear technology is that technology eliminates our need in the workplace: people are replaced by machines, requiring fewer people to perform the same functions. What good are real babysitters to us when we can have a robot babysitter? In I, Robot, society has adapted and become accustomed to the overabundance of robots: they do all the work that we humans don’t want to do ourselves. The robots are restricted by rules to protect us, until they turn against humanity because VIKI, the central ‘brain’ of the robots, has determined that humanity cannot take care of itself.
But what does this have to do with nerds, you ask? Let me explain.
In movies and in real life, nerds embrace technology and make it their own. Nerds are early adopters of new technologies like computers, the Internet, e-readers. Cell phones are an exception, but mainly due to the cost of early cell phones.
In the Revenge of the Nerds movies, the nerds perform computer-based music. In Weird Science, the nerds build a perfect woman (even though she wreaks havoc, the nerds were the ones who knew how to do it) due to her inability to approach girls. They’re not really trying to replace women, they’re trying to learn how to talk to them. In Growing Pains, nerd Carol Anne Seaver once dreams of owning a modem. In the television series Chuck, the “Nerd Herd” works repairing computers. Hackers are really just a bunch of nerds who use their superior knowledge to ‘hack’ into government databases. While he is heroic in the movie, the threat of hackers and people stealing our information from the internet is very real. Even Tony Stark Iron Man is a nerd with money – the comic book fan’s dream of being rich with all the technology and ability to become a superhero role.
The men (and some of the women) on The Big Bang Theory are nerds. They are also cutting-edge scientists studying string theory, space, theoretical physics, things that confuse many laymen like Penny the regular. But, the men created things like a zero-gravity toilet.
Nerds are often the ones who *embrace* technology because they create it. Real life “nerds” Bill Gates and Steve Jobs have had a tremendous influence on everyday life. It is the nerd who has the ability, knowledge and intellect to create, think about the future, generate new ideas and answers to the problems that are presented to society.
It’s the nerd who fixes the technology. We turn to nerds when our computer crashes, when we can’t fix our cell phone, when we don’t know how to set up our new TV system. Now, I’m not saying nerds fix cars, but nerds do design cars and test them.
This embrace of technology is perhaps why stereotypical nerds love the sci-fi genre: sci-fi depicts a world where all the nerds’ hard work has paid off.