Revenge of the nerds | Hacker News Reader

Revenge of the nerds

guardian.co.uk

11 pointsrubberplant23 comments

What a vile and invidious piece. Equating mathematicians and nerds with thieves, and touting his inability to understand another area as a positive virtue.

Sadly, it's those who are trained and experienced in writing who help to shape the minds and attitudes of others. The influence of the public is in the hands of those who comment, rather than those who help to create the world that enables their existence.

I agree with your take on his piece. But understand that there are many people out there who have seen livelihoods and futures dashed by the rapid commodification of content. These people are afraid, angry, and looking for someone to blame.

Yes, there are. But if your living is content, then ignoring developments in your industry is a failure to engage in your career - and if you blithely blame others for the result of that failing in print then you diminish your authority with your readership further.

We're on the same page here, but realistically, what is he to do? What specific advice would you give someone like him beyond "start a blog"?

It sounds like he spent his career typing down his thoughts on the issues of the day and handing them off to an editor to publish. He's not in a good place.

I agree he's not in a good place & I empathise. But the awkward fact is that his work is lowering in value because of greater transparacy, not because of a decrease in worth.

There are several good UK writers earning decent money via newspaper readers today - for example Alexander McCall Smith serialises fictional accounts of ordinary lives, Robert Fisk explores international injustice, Luke Johnson muses on small businesses and Jeremy Clarkson rails against what annoys him - and many others.

Unfortunately, there are also many people paid to write for newspapers because previously nobody knew which articles customers read - now that's becoming clear, some people will lose out. Sad, but true.

Advances in technology have often killed jobs. Actually, advances in technology kill jobs continuously. Like, since the invention of the wheel probably.

It's just that technology hasn't made people LIKE THIS obsolete before. At least, not recently. Now we're killing the jobs of people who can write stuff to thousands, if not millions at a time. It's all fair until it's YOUR job, right?

This kind of over-simplification of complex issues really doesn't do anyone any favours, even if it's supposed to be satire or humour (which I can't be sure about in this case). Technology has _always_ provided a platform for art - where do you think those guitars come from, or the paper you write on, or the paints that people used to paint on cave walls if we want to go back as far as we can?

People develop new things that can be used in various ways. Some of the ways are prosaic, some are creative. Someone develops a computer, and one person uses it to solve an equation, another uses it to create a digital painting - both of these things are both technical and creative. And as technology develops, it becomes more and more accessible to more and more people. I can use a piece of paper without understnading how it was made, just as I can use Photoshop without understanding the mathematics of its underlying algorithms.

This piece seems to spring from the same the-internet-is-killing-journalism mentality that has become more prevalent in recent times. Traditional journalism would be on much safer ground if it wasn't producing this kind of rubbish in a mainstream international broadsheet.

He thinks the side he's on is the artists. Actually it's the old.

This.

Artists are not the conservatives. They're the people embracing change and seeing what they can do with it. If anything, the artists will win even more now, because with luck there'll be a lower barrier to entry.

No luck required. Most of the big well known tech companies are devoted to making it easier for people to do their thing and/or share the results.

Google: Advertisements for your work.

Apple: Music and graphic production toolchains. The iPod / iPhone. The AppStore (for all its many, many flaws).

Yahoo Stores / Ebay / many others: Sell your stuff online.

Free or nearly free webhosting. Social networking, blogging, Twitter, etc.

This isn't accidental. People are social animals, and many of us are creative social animals; we want to share news and creations with our friends, and some of us want to make a buck doing it.

I was thinking more about luck regarding people's abilities to make a living with their work. So far nothing exists to easily facilitate an artist's growth into profitability: That first step is still the scariest for that reason.

This is one of the worst things I've read in recent memory. Nerds rising at the expense of artists? Plotting a world where writers and musicians are at the mercy of mathematicians? Even the most cursory examination of this piece shows that it's not connected to anything resembling reality. Since when did creative types run the show? Since when were 'footballers' (athletes) relegated to the sidelines? What fantasy world has this guy been living in?

From equating downloading to stealing to praising Lord Mandelson and his guilty-before-proven-innocent approach to copyright to the anti-technology sentiment, this seems like an article written by the RIAA (or local equivalent).

I really don't think article is meant to be taken very seriously. I mean dividing society into three powers, the footballers, the artists and the nerds... is not a sociological theory that anyone is going to defend without the aid of several pints of beer. And I'm sure that the author realizes that top sportsmen were highly revered in the 70s (even if in the UK there were more big-name cricketers and rugby players and less celebrity footballers) and that 'creative types' still get plenty of cultural kudos today (which has never been the same thing as easy money).

The only elements of seriousness I can detect are in the snipe at pirates and the allusion to the struggles of the creative industries, but I think there are genuinely two sides to those stories so I find it hard to get worked up it.

I think he's missing a </jest> tag.

Or maybe not. British humor ("humour?") is totally inscrutable to me.

Sadly not. I'm British & this guy is not joking. His 'career' is making unobservant remarks about his life for a newspaper. The internet has opened up what he does to comparison & he is discovering that the market places a low value on his work. Rather than wonder why he is not popular he blames 'nerds'.

That's what I thought at first but then I got all the way through and I'm not so sure. I think he is actually serious.

There's this thing on my desk with buttons and it beeps and I don't understand it (and the people who do wouldn't let me copy their homework) and I WANT MY 1960s BACK DARN IT. Help me, Mandelson, you're my only hope.

Wait... this was satire right?

Wow, a bit bitter are we?

Well guess what...

Revenge? Revenge for what?

Or, more pointedly, what have you done that you're afraid nerds would want revenge on you for?

Fkin hipsters had it coming. lol, jk

This isn't at all about hipsters. Most "hipsters" aren't artists. Most of the artists that find themselves in the hipster subset aren't hipsters so much as they are the people who set the definition for hipster.

That aside, your comment was lame for other reasons too.

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