I understand his argument (that the world needs more nerds and geeks, and the associations brought up by the labels are turning people away from them), but as a former nerd (socially inept loner) and current geek (an expert in a technical field), I rather like things the way they are. It would be nice if there were more of us, but geekdom really wouldn’t be the same if anyone could be one.

Fortunately, there’s a pretty big bar to entry in the field: you’ve got to spend a lot of time, usually your own time, learning things that bore most people to tears. That tends to weed out all but a small fraction of the population. Which is fine by me… the fewer of us there are, the more demand for our services. As I mentioned to GoddessJ last night, boring stuff can be extremely lucrative if done properly. 🙂