I remember that when I worked as a tram conductor during my university holidays, the tram drivers, with accents derived from all over the globe, would stir me about being from “the bonehead factory.” So I was a geek and they weren’t. Years later I read Jon Katz’s Geeks: How Two Lost Boys Rode the Internet out of Idaho. I can’t remember if that book, or some others I read around the time of the Dot-com Crash, got me interested in the idea that the world can be regarded, crudely but accurately, as comprising two distinct types, the Geek and the Jock. And maybe, just maybe, the Geeks would now rule the increasingly digital earth. And that surely would be a good thing.
Of course this notion is simplistic but it has formed a powerful category of my reading ever since. Last year, for example, I read the beguiling American Nerd: The Story of My People by Benjamin Nugent. Another author who made an impression on me was Nicholas Negroponte, whose Being Digital fascinated me, over a decade ago, with its exploration of the massive societal changes being wrought by the new digital environment. Late last year, I caught an advertisement in one of the literary journals that mentioned Negroponte’s name, and since the book was named Born Digital, I assumed it was by him. I’ve been searching for it ever since and had become resigned to the notion that perhaps it wouldn’t get a release in Australia.
Well, I’ve now discovered that this rushed addition to my To Be Sourced list was incorrect. Negroponte wrote a blurb for Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives, which was actually written by John Palfrey and Urs Gasser. I’m tracking down a copy now.
All this is a roundabout way of communicating my excitement at another book – thought lost, now found – on the radar screen.