geeks vs. computer users

[Giaguara]

as a desk yea.. maybe. i switched to laptops from win 95 ...

[fryke]

*grin* ... no, win2k is really the best windows ever... but still a windows. and if you put it through some issues (like surf too much and install too many things...) you'll see IE crashes a lot. you'll see the same driver issues as with any windows and you'll have hardware that isn't yet supported (downgrade to windows Me or upgrade to windows XP). but let's not go too far here.

Geeks are the subject, though, so I guess a discussion 'bout operating systems was unavoidable, anyway.

[TommyWillB]

Hmmm... How long has it been since either the word Geek or User has been used in this thread?

Sure is an interesting meander...

[Giaguara]

10 posts?

[fryke]

nono, my last post had 'geek' in it.

[edX]

i think they meant before that

but i have learned that you can't get a thread full of geeks together and not have them start talking tech stuff in some way shape or form. it's like getting together with buddies after work and talking shop. some of it is good, it puts the discussion at a more relaxed level. too much is bad, you never really leave work.

so if we take that and go back to my discussion, then maybe a lack of more general social skills leads some geeks or wannabes to lean upon the safety of an area they feel comfortable in rather than risk looking or sounding foolish by venturing into less secure arenas. it also brings up the idea that geeks with less social skills assume that others just know what they want so they think it is unneccesary to say it. likewise thank-you's are not required because they assume the person knows they are thankful. i once had a client, a geeky silicon valley subcontracter, part of whose problems turned out to be related to this. once he started voicing what he wanted, he started getting more of it. once he stopped assuming that the only thing he needed to communicate were the tech aspects, his relationships with co-workers and others improved greatly. at least part of this was learning to recognize when to say "i feel" and when to say "i think". "i feel" had not been part of his vocabulary before. it wasn't that he didn't have feelings, he was just so busy hiding them behind technical facts and figures that no one ever saw them. and he assumed everyone could see them.
sometimes people criticize techies for having no feelings and i believe this is completely untrue. in fact i believe that their levels of inner pain are often far more excrutiating than others because they tend to internalize it all. and that's really hard to do. plus they want to deny the validity of expressed emotions most of the time, thus it takes a lot of build up or personal trauma to bring them to the point of believing they should or could do anything about it. hence, when they reach the level of pain required for them to seek any help for it, either from friends, family or a professional; they are hurting a lot more than the average emotionally expressive person. i t seems like no one in this thread is overly like that, but i'm guessing we all know geeks who are.
of course i don't have any scientific data to back this up, it's just been my observance. both in RL and here. of course, when you realize that i am a psychology grad student, stuff like this post is just shop talk for me

[fryke]

Well, I may be another kind, then. I'm a geek alright, but there's that completely different side of me that makes me perform my literature on stage, that makes me present the graphic designs I do, the extro-side of me. Then again, I'm also quite 'intro' in those aspects as long as a product/a poem/a story isn't finished. But that's not my geek side, I think.

[edX]

i think you've hit upon a good way of expressing what i was getting at fryke - that these kinds of people have trouble showing that there are 'sides' to them. they somehow feel like they must compartmentalize everything into completely seperate things so that thinking and feeling are not 2 equally important ways of gathering and relating information, but rather 2 competing methods which can't be integrated. having sides to ones personality is very healthy . especially when one is aware of one's sides and expresses and participates in them. this includes one's dark side which if constantly surpressed will also constantly fight for expression.
and we all have a dark side. i don't really believe much in good and bad, or good and evil. but we do have emotions and instincts that can cause harm. used with awareness and care, they help insure our survival and even our accomplishments. stuffed inside and denied, they tend to surface on their own in unappropriate ways and times. then we end up acting like @ssholes or worse.
to make a tech analogy - i may think of m$ and aol as the dark side. but that doesn't mean that i don't want them to exist. they have their usefulness. but i also don't want them to overpower the light side by denying their powers and influence. in my perfectly balanced world of light and dark of computing - macs would rule home computing, pc's would rule business and there would be quick, efficient protocols for communicating and exchanging data between them. as it is, m$ feels more like the totaly unleashed and uncontroled dark side that is so dangerous in that state. we didn't acknowledge the existence of it as shadow until it was too late.
(ok, let's not go back to os's, it was just an analogy )