Nerds are people who seem to others to be like machines. They are often passionate about a technical
interest, they use jargon,
they avoid confrontation, they favor logic over emotion, and
they enjoy working
with machines.
One of the interesting things about the book is that Nugent provides
examples of machine-like nerds from literature. The prototypical nerd is Victor
Frankenstein of the Mary Shelley
masterpiece. Frankenstein has a powerful
intellect
and technical skill. After all he makes
a body from corpses and brings it to life.
On the other hand, he lacks emotional depth and the ability to connect. Shelley shows this in his withdrawal from family
and in his inability to cope with his creation when it is a living being.
Of course, nerds are not machines.
One thing that makes them nerd is their passion for their
interests. No machine is
passionate. Even though nerds are
passionate, they generally aren’t comfortable with emotionalism. People send out a mass of confusing and
contradictory signals. Nerds prefer
lower-noise communication that is direct, rational, formal, and rule bound.
In this regard, Nugent compares nerds to people with Asperger’s
syndrome. Asperger’s involves difficulty
in reading the emotional cues of others and in affecting appropriate responses. It a result of their neurological makeup;
Asperger’s has a physiological basis. Because
of this, people with the condition share with nerd’s preference for formalized
communication, social discomfort, and attraction to scientific
and technical fields where logic and rules prevail. Nerds don’t necessarily have Asperger’s, but
people with Asperger’s might often end up becoming nerds.
While I’m on that subject, I thought it was interesting that Nugent
cited research about Asperger’s and engineering,
my own profession. There is evidence
that suggests that autism spectrum disorders appear in engineers more than in
the rest of the population. Also, 15
percent of people with Asperger’s have an engineer in their family, about three
times the typical frequency.
In many ways, engineering is a profession of logic and rules. It also calls for creativity
and social skills. A project of any size
is the work of several people. Engineers
have to work with their peers and often with people from other fields: CADD operators, equipment operators, architects,
surveyors,
contractors, skilled laborers,
craftsmen,
lawyers, accountants,
and government
regulators just to name a few. The
social aspect of practicing engineering, and the inherently social mission of
the profession, is greatly underplayed.
Nugent points out that the dichotomy between head and heart, thinking
and feeling, drawn by Romantic
authors and popular teenagers to distinguish the machine-like from the
genuinely human, the in crowd from the nerds, is not necessarily a true
one. To support this argument, he calls
on T. S.
Eliot’s critique
of Romanticism and defense of metaphysical poets. The Romantics appealed to the heart, but the
metaphysical poets used heart and head together, little distinguishing between
thoughts and feelings, and produced affecting poems that were also full of
ideas. We don’t have to choose between
following our hearts and using our heads; if we’re wise we’ll do both.
If you’re looking to understand what nerds are into, you probably won’t
find much in this book that you don’t already know. If you’d like a look at the origins of the
idea of nerdiness and a thoughtful theory of what makes nerds nerds, Nugent’s
book will fill the bill.
If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in
Nugent, Benjamin. American Nerd: The Story of My People. New York: Scribner, 2008.
Keenan is on Google Plus
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Keenan is on Google Plus
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Students with autism lean towards STEM majors
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