End of a Geek Era?

Posted on July 13, 2006

Chartreuse has a post about the "Death of the Geek."

On his classic album Jay-Z wrote a song called The Takeover where he dissed Nas and announced his title as the real king of all things rap.

It was a classic song.

Well the Takeover is being sung again. and this time the geeks are getting dissed.

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The era of the geeks is coming to an end.

It was good while it lasted. But talking about PHP and Cold Fusion with a fevor usually reserved for Jehovah's Witnesses is fading fast.

The Scoble era ended without him realizing it.

This is an interesting post by Chartreuse but the Internet has been slowly going mainstream for years. It isn't a new phenomenon. Look at the explosive growth of online shopping over the past several years. Internet and blogging stars never approached the stardom levels of real-world celebrities. The popularity of geek blog stars has always remained fairly isolated in the tech communities.

Bloggers like Perez Hilton have become much more well-known because they have a much larger readership and a larger potential audience. Celebrity gossip simply garners a much bigger readership than tech gossip. See also: Duncan Riley's post at the Blog Herald from last August: The Demise of Geek Bloggers. Note: Duncan Riley is now blogging over here.