Today, on 'World Geek Day', I'm reminded of countless conversations I've had with countless people, about that word: geek. "It's not a bad thing" people say to me. "It's been reclaimed, like 'queer'," I've even heard.

image credit: Julia Roy

Lexical gripes may not seem relevant to what Not on the Wires stands for, but allow me to explain.

Wired today published a description on its website of five attributes of the geek identity and why they are good things, and it was heartening reading from such an authoritative source.

Maybe it's my years in US high school, but that so many people see the notion of a geek as a positive thing comes to me as a pleasant surprise. But it's not the 'nerd' stereotype or any of that high school stuff that makes me hate the word geek. We all got over that a long time ago. It's something more systemic and much more dangerous to the future of creativity.

What is a geek?

According to the Wired description, the five most important attributes of a geek are passion, intelligence, creativity/enterprise, a rich culture of fashion and music, and a strong intellectual heritage (Isaac Newton and Pythagoras are probably rightly claimed as geeks). These sound like five wonderful attributes that any person or group of people could be proud of. If the main definition of 'geek' really is this set of qualities, and not a technology, comic book and/or discworld-loving individual, then great, but there's still a problem.

A borrowed concept

Much of science uses a concept called 'markedness'. The gist of it is that when you describe something in terms of its attributes, some of those attributes are 'marked' - in other words they are abnormal or at least a departure from the plainest, most likely outcome, whilst others are unmarked - that is to say they are the "default". I have 26 chromosomes - in that respect I am unmarked as a Human being. If I had 34, I would be marked (very marked). Usually things that are 'marked' have special nouns and adjectives to describe them: diabetic, cancerous; unmarked qualities don't need them, because they aren't noteworthy.

Consumer culture and the self

Capitalism, for want of a more current word for the system in which we live, revolves around creating personal insecurities and trying to sell you a new version of yourself that is slightly further away from that loathed self, towards a perfect self. For example, when Edward Bernays - the father of spin - was hired by tobacco companies to convince women to start smoking (and hence double the size of the market), he told them that their cigarettes would be their 'torches of freedom [from male oppression]'. Does tobacco give you a buzz and help you relax? yes. He neglected to mention that. It was the new self he was selling. The words geek and geeky form a snug part of that system, and their history is as part of that loathed self that people move away from.

Marking the wrong attribute

More insidious still is that while conveniently forming a part of this system, both the history and current usage of the word are primarily a reference to something that in my view should be and has historically been unmarked, or normal - the five attributes I have paraphrased above. Meanwhile, shallow, ignorant people who are completely unprepared to take any responsibility for the future other than their own immediate one, and even then in the easiest way possible - people who are actually 'marked' in the socio-scientific (and historic) sense, have no single noun that refers to them. So the positive becomes marked with a word - geek, while the actual, negative anomaly remains unmarked, both in our language and consequently in our thought, and thus sneaks by unnoticed.

This, as journalists, as photographers, as thinkers, and as creators and articulators in any of the growing number of creative industries that face uncertain futures, is something we have to fight, especially if we are of the opinion that ignorance and apathy are increasing. I'll let you decide what you think about that.

As long as we let capitalism label us, especially with a word that has a derogatory history (even if it has been 'reclaimed') and simultaneously ignore those who most need to change, we are pandering to a culture that reflects a higher valorisation of compliance and stupidity than of those five attributes, which I'll paraphrase from Wired one more time: passion, intelligence, creativity/enterprise, a rich culture of fashion and music, and a strong intellectual heritage.