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Tech Industry Needs A Geek Hero

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from the Hollywood-to-the-rescue dept

Wed, May 23rd 2001 4:30pm — Mike Masnick
Well, here's another story that might make you feel ill. Apparently, people who decide these things have decided that the world needs a "geek hero" to encourage kids to work in high tech. So, along comes Hollywood to the rescue. They're talking about how kids want to become doctors and lawyers due to ER and Ally McBeal - and they need the same thing for techies. Wasn't it just a year ago that people were saying that geeks were the heroes of the day simply by nature of the fact that they were becoming billionaires at age 23. Oh, yeah, I guess that doesn't apply any more. Anyway, they did have that show "freaks and geeks", but I don't think those were really the geeks they're talking about - and that show failed anyway. Maybe it's time to look into having a Techdirt TV show. I wonder who we could get to play me?
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  1. identicon
    Phillip, 25 May 2001 @ 6:35am

    Hero to who?

    Us geeks already have our own techie heros (Linus, Postel, etc). I don't see the point of turning them into heros of the general public. Geeks tend to be quite private people who like to rock things behind the scenes. I bet that if I turned into a TV celeb, I'd be treated by my fellow geeks as having 'sold out' (if he's so busy on TV he can *hardly* have time for coding...)
    In the UK, Hewlett Packard are running a series of adverts doing a similar job to the aforementioned. They take the piss out of even chefs being celebrities, then point to some dignified anonymous person who then goes on to explain how they are changing the world. It's actually quite good (hence Hollywood obviously weren't involved).
    Phillip.

    [ link to this | view in thread ]


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