Nerds Of Terday Are Sex Symbols Of Today
Nerds, dweebs, geeks. Call them what you will, but they’re back, and they’re cool.
Ten years after the first Nerd Revolution - largely embodied in the 1984 movie “Revenge of the Nerds” and 1985’s “Real Genius,” “Weird Science” and “My Science Project” - computer geeks are in the limelight again, with a new sense of techie pride.
Pop culture is inundated with pocket protectors and horn-rimmed glasses, from the big screen to the little screen, from newspapers to books. Consider:
“Dweebs,” a new series debuting in the fall on CBS, is about employees at a computer company who have the real world forced upon them in the form of a new office manager (played by Farrah Forke, late of “Wings”).
“A lot of people, to join the human race, are getting into new technology: ‘I’ve got to make that step or the world’s going to pass me by,”’ said Stephen Tobolowsky, who plays a nerd named Karl.
This new geek pride goes beyond the nerd movement of a decade ago, Tobolowsky said. This time, it’s about technology, not simply about being geeky.
Techies are sex symbols for the ‘90s, said Scott Adams, creator of the comic strip “Dilbert.” Dilbert, an engineer, has grown wildly popular; six years after his debut, the mushroom-headed, mouthless man now appears in close to 500 newspapers daily.
“Technical people are becoming the people with the most money,” Adams said. “Also, you see engineers and technical people sneaking into popular culture. In ‘Star Trek,’ for instance, it’s the engineers you see saving the universe much of the time, and in shows like ‘MacGyver.’
“There’s an evolutionary imperative in that people the most capable of reproducing and taking care of children are the most sought after, and engineers are fitting those needs.”
Adams recently ran a personal ad in his Dilbert newsletter from a woman who described Dilbert as her perfect mate: dependable, employed and smart.
Douglas Coupland, the man who coined the term Generation X, investigates geekdom in his latest novel, “Microserfs.” The book is a fictional journal about life at Microsoft, written from the point of view of Dan Underwood, a 26-year-old software coder. Underwood and his co-workers revel in their geekiness, worshipping “Star Trek” and “Melrose Place,” sending e-mail rather than talking and spending 12 hours a day (and often more) coding.
The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Andy Grieser Fort Worth Star-Telegram