Simon Willison’s Weblog

What makes a geek?

7th May 2004

Meri has a great post up entitled Because We Are Geeks, which highlights the differences between geeks and the rest of the world and asks if geeks are really suited to designing and marketing products for non-geeks.

I’ll openly admit that I’m frequently baffled by non-geeks. How could anyone not want a USB Devil Duckie? More to the point, I’ve often wandered what it is that makes some people more inclined to technical pursuits than others. Is it something you’ve born with, or something that you pick up from your surroundings? I attribute a lot of my geekiness to exposure to both Lego technic and a C64 from an early age, but would I still have been drawn towards geeky endeavours if I’d spent my childhood kicking a football around instead? It’s nice to know that Google’s Larry Page was influenced by lego as well.