Recently I have been watching the famous ‘The Big Bang Theory’ TV series. I must say that it is one of the best comedy series I have ever watched. Even ‘Friends’, of which I used to be a die hard fan of seems to be less funny as compared to TBBT. Anyways, this post is not intended for any sort of comparison between comedy sitcoms. Rather, I would like to write about the importance of nerds/geeks in the world.
Just like the fictional weirdo, nerdy, intelligent, genius physicist Sheldon Cooper character is elegantly portrayed by real life actor Jim Parsons, the world always have had many similar nerdy folks. However to the large extent these nerds might be laughed at, ignored or even ridiculed by the so called pragmatic self-concerned society, but they cannot deny that these bunch of folks have changed the world. If we just look at the history in science, technology, economics or arts, we see most of the inventions and breakthroughs done by the nerd scientists and engineers. Sir Issac Newton must have been a nerd in the 17th century England. The genius physicist Albert Einstein must have been a nerd in his college days who delved into the wonders of physics, and opened the universe of relativity for us.
Silicon valley is famously known as a valley of nerds. It was started and later expanded by a bunch of young minds like the trio Bill Gates, Bill Joy & Bill Atkinson. Bill Gates, as we all know became the richest nerd in the world after he co-founded Microsoft along with his friend Paul Allen, another nerd. Bill Joy who is lesser known as a co-founder of Sun Microsystems, is more of a prodigy in programming. This post from Berkeley praises this genius as “Dubbed the “Edison of the Internet” by Fortune Magazine, Bill Joy is one of luminaries of tech. Years before personal computers were being widely used, he created software that would enable the rise of the modern internet…”. And Bill Atkinson is the gifted programmer who along with Steve Wozniak( the geeky genius behind Apple) gave Apple the recognition of being more than just a fruit.
Then, we have the Google founders, Sergei and Larry, who envisioned a world with a web of internet. And adding to that, comes Mark Zuckerberg, another prodigy in programming, who revolutionized the way we live in social life. It is interesting to see that a nerd like Mark, who struggled to be social in his school or college days, came up with the idea of Facebook, a social networking platform. I guess an online social networking platform idea was the least expected from a nerd, but we know, nerds have always surprised the world!
Then, we have the famous ‘PayPal Mafia’ gang which comprised of a bunch of nerds such as Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Reid Hoffman, Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, Jawed Karim etc. Elon as we all know went on to start world famous companies like Tesla & Space X, while Peter Thiel became the angel investor in Facebook. And the trio ( Steve, Chad and Jawed) went on to start YouTube which was later acquired by Google. This is the power of a group of people who are intelligent, hard working and visionary.
I think the most famous nerd in the world would be Steve Jobs, who was not only a geeky visionary who rode on his imagination ride to change the world with Mac and Iphone, but also garnered the respect, admiration and cult following which nerds usually despise or avoid. Many nerds before Steve Jobs used to either confine themselves to innovating in their labs, or teaching & researching in University like MIT, Harvard or Berkeley. But it was Steve who broke the well accepted image of a nerd, which is generally introverted, shy, and not going after money or fame. But Steve Jobs was the exact opposite. He changed the way the world used to look or treat nerds. He proved that nerds can become famous, rich, and immensely powerful. And we see, Apple is the best example of innovation, and being different!
History shows that whenever a bunch of visionary minds have come together, they have often succeeded to change the world. Silicon valley is the world’s largest group of nerds, geeks and tech enthusiasts. Atleast it started off like this, and maybe things have become more profit oriented today, when Wall Street executives and corporate raiders have invaded the innovative silicon valley into a profit churning machine. But still, the spirit of innovation and passion to change the world runs high among the geeks and techies. Starting from the “Traitorous Eight” to “Paypal Mafia”, the nerds and techies made silicon valley the most famous and revered place on the earth.
Thus, lets hope this spirit of innovation continues in the valley. Even though the companies which were started by young minds who were called nerds in school days, who revered books, technology, comics, video games more than dating girls, or body building, who were mocked as being weirdos by the social world, today we see the entire world is dependent on the technologies and innovations these geeks had started, be it Iphone, Google, Tesla, or Facebook. Hence, I remember some wall street trader had said during the 2008 crisis that “Goldman Sachs rules the world” But he was wrong. Today, its the “Silicon Valley that rules the world!”. And in Steve Jobs words…
AbhiKNotes - The blog of Abhishek Karadkar 