MSNBC Hackers stumble toward legitimacy
"IT IS EVERY social activist’s fantasy and every CEO’s nightmare: a powerful, motivated grassroots movement gains legs, legitimacy and sympathetic media attention. Access to the national stage follows thanks to an articulate mouthpiece for the message. And for corporate America what used to be merely a nagging irritation—a kind of free market jock itch—now becomes a cause celeb, with teeth.

And that’s what one sensed happening at H2K."

The New York Times Magazine The Smart Set
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"A generation ago the kind of students who entered science fairs were considered nerds -- preternaturally bright kids whose ardent intellects, moire-patterned wardrobes and clueless social instincts put them outside the adolescent mainstream. Geeks still roam the halls of American high schools -- and of Midwood, for that matter -- but many of Midwood's Intel kids move comfortably in the newly respectable mainstream, where being scientifically astute has a certain cachet. They inhabit an area of cultural endeavor that -- coming a quarter-century after the birth of biotechnology and personal computers and, yes, the rise of Nasdaq -- is now seen not only as intellectually precocious but also, suddenly, improbably, as positioned in a fast lane pointed toward wealth, creature comforts and the freedom to choose what to make of one's life. "

redux [05.14.00]
Netfuture I'm Glad The Internet 'Corrodes' My Culture
"I have spent my whole life in Corrientes, Argentina. Even as it is a state-capital and my family is relatively well-off, there are tons of cultural treasures that I couldn't have known if it wasn't for the Net, and not only knowledge or information, but whole mental frames: a passionate, whole-hearted love for science and philosophy, self-respect as a computer geek, excellent non-contemporary thinking (like Chesterton's, Voltaire's or Shaw's), non-hispanoameric poetry, enlightenment values and, yes, all kinds of erotic information and art (OK, pornography, too :), along with lots of other things.

Those things, althought mostly intellectual in nature, have, as you have pointed, corroded my "native" culture, to the point that I feel more at ease with Scientific American, the Need to Know e-zine, the Linux scene or the Discordian(-like) humor|philosophy. I still have my friends, my girlfriend and my family here, but I don't think I share my culture with them anymore (not that this started wholly with the Net; I have read Asimov from age 6, programmed from age 7, &c., but the richness of the Net has deepened it to the point of making myself councious of it).

It has its social and psychological side effects, but I wouldn't go back for all the group status of the world. I like this culture a lot more than my "native" one, for sheer deepness, meaning and beauty."

The Freedom Forum Katz: geek and proud
""It's appealing to me," Katz added, "that people who have always been perceived as outcasts, marginalized, different, have all of a sudden become the only people who understand how the world works. And you can see it's freaking out the rest of the world."

"These kids have done something unprecedented in the world, which is they have created this rich, diverse and critically important universe almost by themselves — without help or support from any of these other institutions. What they've done is now becoming one of the most significant social institutions in the world, and everyone else is trying to figure out what's happened."

"This is the first time I can think of that a culture of kids understands so much more than any adults about something so important. Sometimes I think if you're not 15 or 16, you're already beginning to fall behind in this culture.""

Salon Learning to Love Your Geek
"The key to interacting with your geek is to learn to speak his or her language, she explains -- defining personal improvements as "upgrades" and bad habits as "nonproductive feedback loops." It's simply a matter of using the right encouragement. Don't tell him he needs to get some exercise and lose some weight; tell him that he will be better prepared for all-night Doom marathons if he is in better physical shape. It's all about becoming more "efficient.""