The geek is in the house
This last decade we have seen Marshall McLuhan’s prediction of a global village come to stunning life. The world has shrunk down to the size of a screen, and we huddle round it like cavemen at their bonfires. Except that they gathered around for heat, and we do so for Information.
This Wednesday, November 5, we assembled to watch the outcome of probably the most important presidential election in the world in our lives. It didn’t matter that we are not Americans and cannot cast our votes. We have almost as much at stake in this election because we are all connected by technology, and everything that happens there has repercussions over here. They choose the leader of the free world, and we have to live with his policies.
Because the whole world has been watching the same cable news broadcasts, reading the same newspaper reports, and following the same Internet coverage, we know as much about the US presidential election as we do about Philippine politics, probably more. It helps that this election has a riveting narrative that resonates in history and literature. A novelist could not have plotted it better: the young candidate running on hope and change, the old candidate (despite his “maverick” branding) representing the old, fossilized order; the first black candidate with a chance of becoming president — a man born during the Civil Rights movement, whose political career began in the state that produced Abraham Lincoln, the president who abolished slavery.
The new president’s job would be to lead his country out of the pit of economic, intellectual and moral despair, and restore America’s image in the world.
There are moments that you know will go down in history. Most of them happen when you’re looking the other way, or too engrossed in your own life to be bothered. This one had the advantage of having a broadcast schedule so we could make the necessary preparations. My friends and I agreed weeks earlier that we would watch the election coverage together. I suggested a restaurant with cable TV, but none of the sports bars appealed to us. Joey’s brilliant idea was for us to rent a room at a videoke lounge, watch CNN, and between reports, perform election-related songs, such as Noel’s rendition of Meryl Streep’s rendition of ABBA’s The Winner Takes It All. Unfortunately the nearest videoke place had no cable TV, and the other one didn’t open until 3 p.m. So we ended up in Ricky’s apartment, which has a flatscreen TV, Wi-Fi, and a fridge full of sweet corn.
Naturally we were rooting for Barack Obama. He looks and sounds like our idea of a president. We don’t want an Average Joe we can have a drink with, we want someone to look up to. Obama is dignified, eloquent, literary, intelligent, and able to speak in complete paragraphs. In these very scary times, he projects calm and composure.
He reminds us that the primary job of a leader is to inspire people.
And He Is A Geek. Look at him: he may be on the cover of Men’s Health now, but you just know he was a pencil-neck. You can tell that at some point he’s been mocked for knowing the answers. He is an intellectual who prizes education and the products of the mind, and takes a stand against ignorance.
Ironically the president-elect has Sarah Palin to thank for helping to mobilize the geek vote. Basically she scared the hell out of us. The moment she said “nucular,” it was clear that she was George W. Bush in lipstick. Throughout the campaign she displayed ignorance in general and ignorance of science and technology in particular. Ignorance may be excused in poor, remote communities with no access to information, but not in a candidate within breathing distance of the Oval Office.
The climax was her sneering derision of fruit fly research. It summed up her attitude towards intellectual endeavors: suspicion and loathing.
If someone must wield the power of life and death over the world, let the apocalypse button be in the hands of people who understand the repercussions of their decisions, not trigger-happy nitwits whose confidence flows from their appalling ignorance.
Inventor Dean Kamen (of the AutoSyringe, the portable dialysis achine, the iBOT self-balancing wheelchair, the Segway human transporter; he also organized FIRST, an NGO which gets kids interested in science by having them build fighting robots), recently told journalists that American culture needs a geek overhaul.
“The next president should recognize the power of technology,” Kamen said. “Technology is how we create wealth, how we cure diseases, how we’ll build an environment that’s sustainable and also gives people the capacity to pull more out of this world and still leave it better than when they found it. You know, people always talk about rights in this country — I wish we had a bill of responsibilities. So I think the president has to stop thinking of the crisis du jour and say, ‘In this race between education and catastrophe, we need education to win.’”The jubilation had already begun when I woke up on Wednesday morning. I refused to go by projections; I sat through the Bush-Gore electoral count and I’m not going through that again. Bad math happens, as we’ve seen in the current financial wreck. I wanted to hear a final tally showing an insurmountable lead, and a concession speech from the Republicans. Only when I saw the acceptance speech live on CNN did I allow myself to believe that the geek had won.
So this is what history feels like. I am always proud to be a geek, but this week I am a happy one.
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