The Triumph of the Nerds by Bob X. Cringley

What I extracted from The Triumph of the Nerds

The first main point the movie gave me was a perfect overview of players, products and companies important for the PC - Crime thriller. Indeed the movie was to be a story about crime. It helped me to unravel the clutter in my head I had before. I will now know what people are talking about when they drop words like Xerox Parc, OS/2, Lotus and Big Blue.

Thanks to The Triumph of the Nerds, I know now what the expression “nerd” means. I always tried to find out a proper explaination of the phrase: “He is a nerd”. (By the way, I never heard “She is a nerd.” Why not?) The word “nerd” does not exist in my mother language. So I often wondered about it’s real meaning, is it a swear-word or just slang. Fortunately for me Douglas Adams provided me with a satisfying explanation:

“A nerd is a person who uses the telephone in order to talk to people about
telephones, and a computer nerd, therefore, is somebody who uses a computer in
order to use a computer.”

Also Doug Muise gave me a deeper insight into a nerd’s life, “Eating, bathing, having a girlfriend, having an acting social life is incidental. ... writing code is the primary force that drives your lives.”

Thank you Bob.


What came to my mind during the film

Steve Ballmer:

“Here I stop and say ‘wow, PC really has become part of the very fabric of the
way people live’ ... ”

In my opinion one very important part of the way people live is their every-day-communication. This fact was also addressed in the end of the film, when they talked about the future role of the internet in the PC-world. Although this statement is 10 years old, I immediately thought of the way my friends’ communicate. As a matter of fact they do not have a use for a TV, a telephone or for meetings anymore. They just meet up on their homepage or in an ominous chatroom called “Irc”. The use of the PC in their communication goes to such great lenghts that anybody who does not follow the online discussions, will not understand a single word of what they are talking about. Once in the blue moon they meet face-to-face, but even then the appointment was made online. Part of being in this circle of friends means you really have to be addicted to the PC and the internet. This fact proves to me that Steve Ballmer was right 10 years ago and is even right now.

Keeping this fact in mind there is one thing I missed in the film; there are dangers to every-day-life associated with the use of the PC and the internet. I stick to the example that I used before about how we talk to each other nowadays and think about the role of nonverbal communication. According to Samy Malcho (popular mime of the 20th century and expert in the field of body-language communication) the percentage of the message’s spoken word is only 10-20%. This would mean that up to 90% of our communication is processed with the help of our bodies, voices, mimiks etc. I do not believe that gadgets, like webcams, can really balance this lack of nonverbal communication, which is the most important part of the way we talk to each other. Do you?