Geek

Keyword entry on the term "geek", exploring its drift over time from circus performer to weak person to technological enthusiast, tracing evolution over history of radio and computing

Ethical Frameworks and Ethical Modalities: Theorizing Communication and Citizenship in a Fluid World

This article examines fan-based citizenship performances and theorizes two terms necessary to understanding these emerging civic practices. In the article, I argue that fan-based citizenship performances question the assumed relationship between citizenship performances, civic groups, and ethics. Communication scholars have traditionally understood civic actions as deeply connected to social institutions, such as family and church, and civic groups, like the Democratic Party, Green Peace, or the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. I argue that economic, social, and political shifts since the late 1970s have made the membership in those social institutions and civic groups more fluid than ever before. In a fluid world, citizens may easily choose Harry Potter over the Republican Party to guide their civic action on same-sex marriage. A fluid world that enables citizens to choose popular culture media texts to authorize civic actions demands new theoretical terms. I offer ethical framework and ethical modality as terms to enable researchers to investigate this shift and the civic actions it enables. Through processes of pairing and unpairing, fan-based citizenship performances combine noncivic ethical frameworks from popular culture with civic ethical modalities, civic actions such as voting, petitioning, and so on. These terms allow researchers to examine fully a wide range of fan performances of citizenship, including performances that are emancipatory and problematic, effective and ineffective, and grassroots and industry organized. In this article, I use the example of the HPA’s “Not in Harry’s Name” campaign to illustrate how these terms can be used to investigate fan-based citizenship performances

Drinking From the Fire Hoses at Future of News and Civic Media Conference 3.0

A companion report to "Knight News Challenge: Casting the Net Wide for Innovation," describes Knight's fourth News Challenge winners, their media projects, and discussions and tweets from a June 2010 conference on trends in and potential for civic media

Developing the ‘Control Imaginary’: TIME Magazine’s Symbolic Construction of Digital Technologies

This article discusses the shifting representations of control over and via ICTs on the cover of TIME magazine (1950‒2017). We focus on the subject positions and forms of agency the magazine ascribes to different social actors and on the solutions advanced for remaining in control of technological change. Informed by discourse analysis methodology, our analysis of the corpus (N = 81 covers) identifies four central themes: the configuration of the relationship between humanity and technology; the construction of youth as both potentially powerful and vulnerable “others”; the identification of technocapitalists and creative visionaries as the ultimately powerful drivers of innovation and progress; and the disruptive effects of virtuality. Through these discourses, the magazine legitimizes an entrepreneurial approach to ICTs as the means to retain agency against the “inevitable” technological development, while also positioning the technocapitalist elite as the drivers of our common future

Spartan Daily March 22, 2011

Volume 136, Issue 29https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/1136/thumbnail.jp

Geek Cultures: Media and Identity in the Digital Age

This study explores the cultural and technological developments behind the transition of labels like \u27geek\u27 and \u27nerd\u27 from schoolyard insults to sincere terms identity. Though such terms maintain negative connotations to some extent, recent years have seen a growing understanding that geek is chic as computers become essential to daily life and business, retailers hawk nerd apparel, and Hollywood makes billions on sci-fi, hobbits, and superheroes. Geek Cultures identifies the experiences, concepts, and symbols around which people construct this personal and collective identity. This ethnographic study considers geek culture through multiple sites and through multiple methods, including participant observation at conventions and local events promoted as geeky or nerdy ; interviews with fans, gamers, techies, and self-proclaimed outcasts; textual analysis of products produced by and for geeks; and analysis and interaction online through blogs, forums, and email. The findings are organized around four common, sometimes overlapping images and stereotypes: the geek as misfit, genius, fan, and chic. Overall, this project finds that these terms represent a category of identity that predates the recent emergence of geek chic, and may be more productively understood as interacting with, rather than stemming from, dimensions of identity such as gender and race. The economic import of the internet and the financial successes of high-profile geeks have popularized the idea that nerdy skills can be parlayed into riches and romance, but the real power of communication technologies has been in augmenting the reach and persistent availability of those things that encourage a sense of belonging: socially insulated safe spaces to engage in (potentially embarrassing) activities; opportunities to remotely coordinate creative projects and social gatherings; and faster and more widespread circulation of symbols - from nerdcore hip-hop to geek-sponsored charities - confirming the existence of a whole network of individuals with shared values. The emergence of geek culture represents not a sudden fad, but a newly visible dimension of identity that demonstrates how dispersed cultures can be constructed through the integration of media use and social enculturation in everyday life

Harry Potter and the Half-Crazed Bureaucracy

What would you think of a government that engaged in this list of tyrannical activities: tortured children for lying; designed its prison specifically to suck all life and hope out of the inmates; placed citizens in that prison without a hearing; ordered the death penalty without a trial; allowed the powerful, rich, or famous to control policy; selectively prosecuted crimes (the powerful. go unpunished and the unpopular face trumped-up charges); conducted criminal trials without defense counsel; used truth serum to force confessions; maintained constant surveillance over all citizens; offered no elections and no democratic lawmaking process; and controlled the press? You might assume that the above list is the work of some despotic central African nation, but it is actually the product of the Ministry of Magic, the magicians\u27 government in J.K. Rowling\u27s Harry Potter series. When Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was released this summer, I, along with many others, bought and read it on the day of its release. I was immediately struck by Rowling\u27s unsparingly negative portrait of the Ministry of Magic and its bureaucrats. I decided to sit down and reread each of the Harry Potter books with an eye toward discerning what exactly J.K. Rowling\u27s most recent novel tells us about the nature, societal role, and legitimacy of government

We Innovators

2018. “We Innovators.” In Sloganization in Language Education Discourse, edited by Barbara Schmenk, Stephan Breidbach, Lutz Küster. Multilingual Matters, 19–41

Volume 37 - Issue 9 - Friday, November 30, 2001

The Rose Thorn, Rose-Hulman\u27s independent student newspaper.https://scholar.rose-hulman.edu/rosethorn/1313/thumbnail.jp

Sin and the Hacker Ethic: The Tragedy of Techno-Utopian Ideology in Cyberspace Business Cultures

This article traces the course of idealistic thinking in the “hacker ethic” of the computer industry, with the aim of diagnosing the unfortunate lapses in business ethics that can ensue from idealistic thinking. Several Silicon Valley companies are mentioned, but Facebook is the prime example, simply because they are the biggest target and clearest example of bad ethics. The original “hacker ethic” was founded on admirable ideals, but the problem occurs when these ideals are used to rationalize a self-serving ideology. Facebook’s history shows how idealistic thinking can become embedded in a business culture. As an antidote to the ethical lapses that may befall such idealistic thinking, this paper argues that the biblical notion of sin can help diagnose the problem and suggest corrective measures. The paper analyzes the corruptive patterns of sin in cyber-tech businesses and closes with practical guidance for business practitioners