MindComet

Bad Geek Movies are Bad

In some ways, I’m overjoyed to see geeks getting so many movies aimed at our technically literate audience, but in others it makes me cringe and run screaming in horror. Let’s look at an upcoming sci-fi / geek movie that probably won’t make the cut for AFI’s Top 100 greatest movies ever.

Did you ever see the WWE produced movie ‘The Condemned’? It starred Steve Austin (WWE wrestler) and Vinnie Jones (actor, ex Soccer player. Holds record for fastest Red card in a game.) It was a story about a group of prisoners on death row which were bought from around the world by an eccentric billionaire, they were then taken to a secluded island dropped and told the last one standing wins their freedom. Their battle for survival was broadcast over the internet to millions of homes of sickos who logged in and paid to watch. It was marvelous. It tried to carry a message that seemingly criticized the WWE and humanity’s bloodlust. It was amazing! It was so good I left after just 30 minutes of it. After 30 minutes I realized I had wasted my money and decided to cut my losses and not waste my time or brain cells. The message was so heavy handed that I felt like it was by the Wachozki brothers (well, bother and sister now.)

Gamer is “a high-concept action thriller set in a near future when gaming and entertainment have evolved into a terrifying new hybrid. Humans control other humans in mass-scale, multi-player online games: people play people… for keeps. [...] the first-person shooter game “Slayers,“ allows millions to act out their most savage fantasies online in front of a global audience, using real prisoners as avatars with whom they fight to the death.“ Now doesn’t that sound like an awesome concept for a movie? But wait it gets better. It features a main character named “Kable.“ Yep, Kable. As if any self respecting geek would call themselves that online. Cable was a mildly interesting X-Men story arc character but in the end he was an overjuiced wanna-be. The K only makes it worse.

I like Gerard Butler, I really do. I loved 300 overlooking all of its faults. But this movie makes me angry as it seems to be some horrible spinoff of the classic Schwarzenneger ‘Running Man.‘

I give Gamer a 20:1 chance of being anything more than horrible suspense/thriller. It is written by the same guy who did the Crank movies and they’re at least entertaining.

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Posted by Admin on May. 27, 2009

‘Geek’ is Ambiguous

Geeks are intellectuals that were raised with a video game controller in lieu of a pacifier.  Typically lacking social skills, geeks eventually group and define their own social terms and etiquette.  As they mature, they quickly develop superior skills of technical merits.  A large portion become quite active in many areas of the web-sphere.  As society moves into the digital and information based era, a global netocracy seems rampant.  Flattening economies and still discriminating against areas with a technical disadvantage, globalization in many respects was facilitated by this movement.  Geeks niche in society is drastically changing from social outcasts with an irrelevant subculture to the facilitators and architects of the digital era.  With a more refined and matured subculture, many can associate with some part of the geek world and, due out the elevated placement in society of geeks and their merits, find it quite trendy to announce that connection.  For example, there was a time where socializing over the web was considered derogatory and was assumed to be done by individuals that lacked proper social skills.  Today, there is widespread adoption.  The demographic of the audience in the theatre of the showing of original Star Wars and the demographic in the recent Star Trek remake is also an illustration.

Nevertheless, the digital era cannot be ruled and controlled by the same pioneers in the industrial era.  Due the technical requirements, John D Rockefeller would not be able to monopolize on the prospects of the internet because he would lack understanding.  There is no way he would have came up with facebook.  If you pitched twitter to him, he would pretend to understand and pass on it.  People don’t realize what this means.  Let me try to give some perspective to it.  As society becomes more dependent on technology, they yield control to persons with technical abilities.  It is implicit and informal.  Also, due to the nature of the internet, there is no nationalism or fixed ideologies shared by these technical persons.  This complements the globalization of business, and the advancement of technology as a species, rather than as a country, state, or other faction.  Today, .Com millionaires have the same prestige as industrialists in their era.  The difference here is that many industrialists were at an advantage in many regards (family, wealth, etc.), while .Com millionaires are all geeks with only one advantage, their technical abilities.  This is the first time in history where this amount of success and wealth is achievable in a realm of meritocracy.  It shouldn’t be taken for granted and should be recognized. 

Be a geek. Facilitate the new era. Be awarded for your abilities. Better society.

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Posted by MindComet on May. 20, 2009

To boldly go

Being geeky used to have a much bigger stigma attached to it than it does now. Generation X was just really coming to accept computer geeks as the home computer began to take off. Now, the Millenials and Gen-Y are fully ensconced in geekiness such that we’ve seen geek shows hit the mainstream, the Internet become vogue such that TV is basically a regurgitation of information online, and the Geek has risen to power.

I knew I was geeky when I went and saw The Matrix seven times in the theatre. It was my Star Wars, it opened new doors in technology and it followed a computer programmer as he descended into this unique world complete alien to his world. It was Through the Looking Glass and Star Wars combined.

I knew I was geeky when I spent more than 100 hours on the family’s dial-up connection chatting on IRC and learning HTML rather than go outside and play with the other kids in the neighborhood. I had found my friends, and they were names in an IRC chat room. Sure I had friends in real life, but they didn’t live close and I couldn’t drive so online was the place to be. The idea of someone spending that much time online shocked my parents and was a constant point of friction between us, but now I do a job I love because of the seeds I planted back in those formative years.

I knew I was geeky when I got online and confirmed that yes, I have seen every Star Trek: The Next Generation episode ever. And yes, I firmly hold that Jean Luc-Picard is the greatest captain Starfleet ever had, James Tiberius Kirk be damned (though I may change my opinion once I see the new movie.)

I knew I was geeky when I spent more money on my computer than on my first car. I bought my first car in college for $500, however I had dropped over $1000 on a laptop just a few months before. The car was a deal I got from a roommate, and turns out he thought he was selling me a lemon and unloading a car that was going to die soon. It’s been five years and it still runs, I gave it to my grandmom and she loves it for getting around.

I was at a wedding this past weekend and while sitting with a group of friends who are very close we turned to discussing Macs and the rampant fan-boyism that we all suffer from. I’m a lesser Mac fanboy but I still keep abreast of news and such, and we got into the discussion of AppleTV vs Mac mini. I’ll forgo the explanation of the pros and cons, but rather point out that the discussion was had while people around us danced, laughed and talked about topics directly relating to the couple who tied the knot. Not us computer geeks, we had a debate to wage.

The point is that geekiness is no longer a sin. It’s more mainstream and acceptable. This blog is celebrating that our group’s entire profession revolves around this facet of our personality.

Geeks desire to build, and see things they built put to use, though we don’t necessarily do it with wood or brick or a forge for metals, coding is no less an act of engineering and creativity. Many have mistakenly described the driving point of programmers to make things that allow us to be lazier and lazier, but that’s not true - we simply like to build stuff. Legos, Tinkertoys, Lincoln Logs, and Erector Sets all filled this need and provided a point of fascination for me growing up, but when the computer was set before me I was instantly enthralled by the endless possibilities. And when I first began exploring the near infinite web, I was drawn further in by the vision of this endless landscape not unlike the first settlers going West. This was my new frontier.

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Posted by Admin on May. 20, 2009