Geek culture

Outsourced and automated network skills: Is it the end of the keyboard cowboy?

Aside from Angelina Jolie, the movie Hackers just didn’t have a whole lot of redeeming factors if you took it too seriously: overwrought dialog, an improbable eco-terrorism plot, and CGI “hacking” visualizations to make the most neophyte CCNA blush. It definitely has its cult appeal, though, because it captured the romance of tinkering with complex systems that normal people just don’t understand, whether that’s Zero Cool taking over a television station programming or the local networking guru keeping the server humming along against all odds.

True networking admins just aren’t like other people: They understand how to coax every bit of juice out of hardware, how to manually configure every last detail through the command line, and how, almost magically, to fix problems they don’t even quite understand. And that kind of knowledge didn’t come overnight, but after years of training and just plain practical experience.

Those skills, long prerequisite to successful IT, might soon be obsolete.

So says Rob Whiteley of Forrester. Command-line mastery is on its way out in the near future. “It’s pretty much being outsourced,” he said. “If you don’t outsource it, you can probably find a tool to automate it for you.” Instead, Rob said, IT shops need professionals who can digest higher-level views of security, network management and network architecture. Unfortunately, Rob said, the colleges and certification programs are still living in a command-line world and are only slowly catching up.

Don’t trust an analyst’s word? I also spoke with Steven Ostrowski, spokesperson for the Computing Technology Industry Association. In our interview, which I’ll write about more next week on SearchNetworking, he said technical skills alone were no longer cutting it.

“There are jobs out there for the people who have a combination of technical skills, business skills and communication skills,” he said. “But the tech guys have to understand what the considerations are.”

That being said, just because things are changing doesn’t mean everyone agrees IT is dead. As 5- and 10-year-old technologies are now being standardized, outsourced, or automated, the creation of new IT demands hasn’t ceased: VoIP, video, and NAC are just the beginning, and the pace of innovation isn’t about to dry up. IT professionals will always have to be there to determine which technology can deliver real enterprise benefit, and how it can best achieve that benefit. As long as there is technological innovation, there will be IT … even if they’re not the roguish keyboard cowboys they used to be.

The IT Guy: Disaster recovery

The other bad news is that the backup systems in the data center were not yet operational…

> Interested in disaster recovery? You can learn more in the Storage Decisions Disaster Recovery Virtual Seminar, March 27th from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. ET. Registration is open now.

> View all our IT Guy cartoons on SearchNetworking.com.

Geeks defy (and underscore) geek stereotypes

I spend a lot of time, possibly too much time, thinking about geek culture, and apparently I’m not the only one.

No sooner had I blogged about pundits trying to define the image of the “new” networking pro than I received a fierce note from one of our readers. His complaint was that the characters portrayed in our IT Guy comics didn’t resemble him, or any of the IT pros he worked with. “I looked like Jake ‘the Snake’ back in the 80s, and with no fat gut,” he wrote.

A week or so later, eWeek ran a story about one Microsoft employee’s blog, which aims to “dispel the tech nerd stereotype.” The blog, Microspotting, is written by Ariel Stallings, self-proclaimed “Web 2.0 geek,” who seeks out Microsoft “geeks who are passionate about what they do” and profiles them on her blog to point out that the evil Microsoft empire isn’t quite what outsiders might think. As cited in the eWeek article, Ariel has profiled the guy who rides everywhere on a Segway, wearing a golden helmet, as well as a goth lady who wears petticoats and top hats to work.

Similarly, Elizabeth Todd Doyle’s piece on fangrrls at sci-fi conventions; points out how female fans of science fiction and comic books are going against the grain of the geek stereotype.

It’s probably not necessary to point out that some people would say riding a Segway or wearing a top hat to work — or attending a sci-fi convention — is a pretty geeky thing to do, regardless of your gender or whether you wear a pocket protector.

Also, I’m not bothering to differentiate “geek” from “nerd” for the purposes of this blog, but I should at least acknowledge that for some, “nerd” is much more negative in connotation.

One thing I find interesting in these comments on geek stereotypes is the perception that John Hodgman, the PC guy from the Mac VS. PC ads (mentioned in both the above articles) represents the image of a geek (as foil to Justin Long’s “hip” Mac…) and that somehow the geek image needs to be remedied.

But don’t most of us actually prefer John Hodgman to Justin Long, anyway? As Wired blogger Pete Mortensen remarks, “The one enduring criticism of the ads is that John Hodgman’s PC is funnier and more likable than Justin Long’s sleazy hipster doofus Mac.” And Anna Johns on TV Squad.com also points out that “super-hip Mac” actor Justin Long “has played some memorable geeky roles in Galaxy Quest and Dodgeball.”

Perhaps some definition is needed here. Obviously, not all IT workers are (or wish to be known as) geeks. Neither are all geeks computer-savvy. At the moment, I like this broad definition from Wikipedia’s (unsurprisingly lengthy) entry for geek:

A person with a devotion to something in a way that places him or her outside the mainstream. This could be due to the intensity, depth, or subject of their interest.

Under that definition, you could have not only your computer geek, math geek or band geek… you could also have an architecture geek, a horticulture geek or even a baseball geek! So, embrace your inner geek — and if somebody calls you a geek, don’t quibble about stereotypes, but take it as a compliment.

Or maybe I should really be talking about nerds, after all…

The IT Guy: Amazing Grace

When we left Dave, he had discovered an interesting room full of forgotten computers…

> View all our IT Guy cartoons on SearchNetworking.com.

• Read more about Grace Hopper
• Read a definition of “cruft“

The IT Guy: Cable under the table

> View all our IT Guy cartoons on SearchNetworking.com.

This cartoon is partially based on an idea suggested by our reader, Jim Shumaker. Jim will receive The Cubes IT Guy playset (not affiliated with The IT Guy or TechTarget) for his suggestion. Thanks, Jim!

What’s the opposite of networking?

Last night I was watching Attack of the Show again and they mentioned a site called BuzzFeed, which picks up the latest and greatest Web trends and conversations and compiles them all with an editorial perspective. One of the trends they had picked up on of late was the rise of “anti-social networking” sites, which are pretty much what you’d think.

Enough people have gotten fed up with Friendster and LinkedIn (and hearing how social networking is the new black) and have formed parodic sites like Snubster, EnemyBook, and isolatr… designed, in the words of EnemyBook, to “disconnect you to the so-called friends around you.”

I suppose social networking was overdue for a backlash, although you probably don’t need me to point out that there’s an irony in connecting to disconnect. Especially if you believe that parody is the sincerest form of flattery (in the world of social media, in particular), then you have to think that the authors and users of these sites are really more interested in promoting an agenda, a sneering iconoclastic stance that nonetheless snuggles right up next to that which it seeks to mock — like Sid Vicious spitting out the lyrics to “My Way” — the essence of punk rock, but knowing all the while that for all his swagger, he was really a pretty boy in an extremely well-marketed boy band.


Anyway, if you really don’t want to connect to other people, why not just go to the library and bury your nose in a book?

The other interesting think about anti-social networking sites, as pointed out in naturalsearchblog, is their effect on search engine optimization efforts. It undermines your efforts to associate with the “right” keywords if you go and list a bunch of stuff that you hate. (Maybe that’s why Hatebook makes their content pages uncrawlable.) I thought of this same problem once when I was listing all the things I disliked on my personal blog profile… I didn’t want the system to connect me with other people who listed “Thomas Kinkade” or “beer pong” just because I said I didn’t like those things. So I scrapped the list.

Of course, maybe that’s the point of anti-social networking… I can make un-connections with other cranky people who hate the same things I hate. Is it easier to relate to someone about your dislikes than your likes? Hmmm… well, speak ill of Steve Ballmer on any Linux forum and you’ll probably find a friend for life.

World Cyber Games sneak preview

Some of us may already be well aware of, or well on our way to, the video-game conference hosted in Seattle this year. For those of you not in the know, the buzz of gamers is in the air; World Cyber Games (WCG), the world’s largest game festival, starts October 4 and goes through October 7, and SearchNetworking.com reporter, Andrew Hickey, has the privilege to get a behind-the-scenes view — thanks to ProCurve Networking by HP, who is supporting the WCG network infrastructure. Get your gamer face on, and check back in to get a sneak peek into the festival.

Do geeks rule the world (or are we slaves to the marketing machine)?

It’s a banner week for geeks, at least for geek-themed pop culture. Between the release of Halo 3 on Tuesday and all the geek-friendly TV shows premiering all week long, I wonder how many people are able to concentrate on work.

My work week has been consumed with two activities: editing a screencast for SearchNetworking.com and launching this blog. Screencasts and blogs… two media forms that didn’t even exist just a few years ago, but have already become pretty mainstream. Even sportscasters these days are routinely rallying viewers to “check out the blog!”

Monday, Wired ran a story about the TV mainstreaming of geek chic phenomenon. I watched NBC’s Chuck this week (it’s the story of a retail tech support dude who unwittingly learns encrypted government secrets through an email attachment). Frankly, the show was entertaining, but less a celebration of the geek life and more a mainstream action/spy story with an underdog hero and some geek-friendly eye candy sprinkled on top — a Tron poster here, a Matrix-looking set there, a Zork reference in the first five minutes.

Still, tech and techhie references abound. Have geeks taken over the world?

Actually, I have this theory about marketers and geeks. There’s some kind of triggering mechanism in the modern psyche trained to tweak out at the mention of key concepts, the way mine does when I hear “Time Lord” or the first few measures of a Black Sabbath song. Like Pavlov’s dog, you start to salivate; you can’t think straight from the excitement. It’s that thing! That thing I like! That thing is me! I must own it! Your elven sword glows blue. Your processor crashes. And you open your wallet.

If you think about it, everybody has their trigger, whether it’s “shoe sale” or “baby back ribs.” But for geeks, I think there’s an especially mouth-watering hook that marketers can dangle out there because the geek concepts are mainly man-made technology items and pop-culture references… and there are so many diverse, yet specialized triggers (”wireless-G router,” “TIE fighter,” “20-sided die.”)… Stuff that can be sold. And geeks are buying.