High-tech elevates status of lowly geeks

From Correspondent Perri Peltz

(CNN) -- The meaning of the word "geek" has evolved considerably since its original definition: a carnival performer who bit the heads off live chickens and snakes. The term still has a derogatory connotation, describing a goofy, techno-gadget fanatic. But that may be changing too.

With the rise of information technology in the business world, technophiles have ascended in stature as well. Many now wear the badge of geekdom with honor.

Long subject to outsider status, geeks are finally coming into their own. Madison Avenue has caught on to the geek craze. Print ads and commercials now commonly spotlight geeks.

Geeks have their own Web sites and even their own version of a pin-up.

With the virtual explosion of new technology jobs, it seems no one can afford not to have a geek or two in their world.

"There's a streak of alienation running through this culture," said Jon Katz, who has written about the Internet for Rolling Stone, Wired and Slashdot.org. "There's a streak of braininess, obsessiveness. I mean, anybody can use a computer, but not anybody's a geek."

"I think the new reality that's converging all this is, you have on the one end this culture of extraordinarily gifted outsiders who have patched together the Internet. And then there's the rest of the world -- business, education and politics -- that suddenly has woken up to the fact that they desperately need the Internet. It's very important. And so they become sort of central while still not being in the mainstream."

Katz has corresponded with many geeks over the Internet. One in particular got his attention: an Idaho kid named Jesse Dailey, who professed to belong to the Middleton High School Geek Club. In an e-mail to Katz, Jesse wrote:

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"For the first time in my life, I had a name to call myself. And for the first time in my life, I was in a club that I could keep people out of."

Jesse became a main focus in Katz's latest book, "Geeks."

"Initially I was very proud of it," Jesse said of the term. "When I first started using it in high school, and when we first started the Geek Club, it was very much a badge. It was very much a token."

He said geeks are complex creatures:

"People who are intelligent, isolated and fascinated with computers. I think that's what constitutes a geek for me."

That definition -- computer savvy and smart but isolated and rebellious -- fits nearly all geeks, according to Katz's e-mail.

It certainly applied to Jesse, who played games on his computer alone for hours.

"The anger and the angst. I think a lot comes from the same place. That you're forced to sit for seven years in a place that doesn't like you and you don't like it. And you just can't do anything about it. That's kind of a jading experience," Jesse said.

Says Katz, "(Jesse) was alienated from school. He wasn't learning much. He didn't have a lot of teachers who were close to him. He didn't have social acceptance. He had never been invited to a party in high school. He's very much a loner."

According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, that image of alienation, of being an oddball, is one reason why some 850,000 jobs will go unfilled this year.

Jesse Dailey, who once professed to belong to the Middleton High School Geek Club, is now enrolled at the University of Chicago.

Despite the recent geek-chic, there is still widespread reluctance to be considered one. Jesse has no such misgivings. A smart kid with bad grades, two years ago he faced a dead-end future in his rural Idaho town -- until his newfound e-mail friend Jon Katz encouraged him to turn his life around.

Jesse responded to the challenge, using the Internet as a springboard.

"He had done everything you can do on a computer. He asked for information. He educated himself online. He connected with people online. He explored the world online," Katz said.

Jesse went on to find a job hundreds of miles away in Chicago, before he left Idaho. He searched Alta Vista and Hotbot to check out construction delays along his route.

He went online to locate housing. And when faced with the problem of how to knot a necktie for his first job interview, he went where? Online.

For Jesse, the Internet has always provided a net.

"Fundamentally it's an act of communication. Even if it's totally passive, even if I'm just putting something on a Web page someone is reading. That is an act of communication between me and that person, which is kind of by definition a lack of isolation," Jesse said.

Inspired by Katz, and a chance campus visit, but with no money and a mediocre grade point average, Jesse decided to take a long shot: college admission.

His tendency to challenge the status quo, a common trait of geeks, stood him well. Jesse argued his way into the University of Chicago class of 2003. Score one for technology.

"It's about the ability of human beings to change their lives using this radical new technology just the way Jesse did. Because he would not be standing here without the Internet. I wouldn't know him. He wouldn't be at this university," Katz said.

With his freshman year just completed, Jesse said he is still a geek, proud of the things that make him different, and life is good.

"I have a pretty happy life here. I have a great girlfriend and I have a good job and I'm taking mostly interesting classes. I think this is a good place for me. I'm very happy that I came here," Jesse said.

Katz's book has been optioned for a movie. About computing. About outsiders. In short, about being a geek.

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