Are we Geeks a product of our genes, our environment or both

[MuadDib]

Thinking on the test, The Frey (poor guy you can see him getting real agitated (not that I don’t respect you or anything dude, I admire and respect any older techie)), and the fact that I got Geek God and i’m barely 16 it got me wondering whether geeks are created by genetics or the environment.

I tend to come down in the middle with it being a bit of both, based purely on myself: because if my genes hadn’t coded for the way the bones in my wrist were made then I wouldn’t have broken it (preventing me from doing any sport or gym for three years) forcing me to increase my knowledge of computers (what else do I have to do at school? oh yeah study, I forgot about that for a second!) So thats really a combination of both, my genes coded for my bones, the environment made me break it and provided computers and the internet.

What do other people think?

[theFrey]

Well this Dudette thinks that a lot of it is enviroment. I was one of the few people in my group who lusted after a pc when they became available in the 80’s. And with the exception of two high school buddies who were accepted to M.I.T. I was the only one who picked up *any* skills until windows made it possible for user gumps to run a computer.

You can have the best genes in the world for this kind of thing, but if you do not have access to it at an early age, you will be hard pressed to fulfill your full potential. Which is why I have spent the last twenty year hounding parents to make sure that they had a computer in the house for their kinds to become familiar with. As I have told them, unless you want your kid to go, “you want fries with that?” for the rest of their life, you need to get them on a pc!

I made sure theNeiceletts and theNephew had computers when they were growing up, and it helped them a lot with their school work. I was particularly amused when theLittlestNeice showed her panicky substitute teacher the magic keys (CTRL/ALT/DELETE) to reboot a frozen system. And laughed my hiney off when theSister got a call from the grade school administration office asking why theMiddleNeice was ‘dissing their new shipment of Apple pc’s. 😀

Was I disappointed that none of them became compugods? Sure, but they had their shot at it. And they are all competent users who do not p*ss me off by doing stupid stuff to their systems, so I guess that is some blessing.

I will admit that the mark of a true geek is the passion they have for their computers, but with out the right environment they would never discover their inner geek.

[Author]

Posts