A while ago I was reading a comment on Slashdot that indicated that evolution in the human population no longer happens. This isn’t actually true as humans have continued to evolve albeit in subtle ways – BBC2 had a very good program about this a while back.
One difference is the increase of autism which although the cause isn’t known it is known that engineers tend to have autistic characteristics. The growth of technology has caused many geeks to work together thus forming relationships and having children whos’ genes include autistic characteristics from both parents. Rates of autism have been recorded as rising sharply in areas of the US with tech heavy populations.
That’s one way we are evolving but there may be another much worse one – we Geeks may evolve ourselves out of existence, and it’s all because of the computer.
Geeks are not exactly known for being the most social people, and when they are they tend to socialize with other geeks, who are for the most part males. This reduces the chances of forming sexual relationships and thus having children.
Ten years ago this wont have been such a problem, however now we can form our social circles on-line and the web allows us to easily find like minded people and form very specific groups. While this no doubt creates new opportunities for some sexual relationships but it also means many geeks will be sitting behind their computer instead of meeting potential partners. Extend this over several generations and the effect shall be geeks not multiplying and their numbers shall be in decline.
This could have an effect on society in general. If the numbers of tech savvy people drop too low an advanced technological civilisation could find itself in trouble, there’ll be plenty of technology but very few who understand it. There could be a minor reversal of the tren
however since people who understand technology will earn vast salaries and will thus more likely form relationships.
However there is a twist to this story – Technology created today by Geeks could lead to truly artificially intelligent systems, these systems will be able to understand technology and thus people who understand technology will be in less demand. The Geeks will have not
only created the technology to replace themselves but unknowingly made this very technology necessary.
About the author:
Nicholas Blachford is a Software Engineer / Architect from Northern Ireland but lives in Amsterdam, Holland. He is interested in Computer, Micorprocessors and all sorts of things generally techie. He’s written open source Audio
software on The Amiga and BeOS. Tonight he’s going to go out to a bar and try to meet some non-geeks.
My girlfriend knows what parallax scrolling is. Needless to say, our kind will wipe you out.
wouldn’t blending of different races create an even bigger variety and therefore smarter and stronger children?
the exact opposite happens in mennonite communities: they only marry each other and rarely marry anyone out of their village and the results are sometimes (make that frequently) not good
speaking of evolution, we seem to have evolved ourselves off-topic
Huh? Since when where geeky parents a requirement for geeky children? My parents certainly aren’t geeks, but here I am.
This doesn’t make much sence to me… just becase geeks aren’t breading like rabits doesn’t mean we woun’t have any more. My parents were not tech heads. But I turened out oK (relativly)
And my ex-g/f father was a software devel (worked with John C. back in the days of softdisk) and although she knows how to program she mostly hates it and would rather do something else.
I think what the real problem is, is that we are not teaching the basics of computing any more. Higher education in most places teaches courses on “how to set up and run VB” or in this new age “how to work with .Net” …
My fear is that in a few years the kernel writers (those old guys with long grey beards) will become extinct.
With the layer apon layer of abstraction which we pile onto the basic functions of comuter to make it “easyer” for programers, thats whats killing us. Realy, if you need that much padding between you and the computer “Dont program – its not for you”.
But thats just me .. i could be wrong.
I don’t quite think this will happen. Even as people form most of their friendships online with a small select group, there is still a strong tendency to form breeding relations.
What we may very well see is a trend of the breeding partners having less in common and people spending more time with their friends than their spouses. This may be mildly strange in some parts of Europe and the US, but it is already very common in parts of Tribal Africa where sociologically people spend little time wtih their spouses but a lot of time with their friends and where spouses have very few friends in common. In Tribal Africa, men tend to spend a lot of time with men and women tend to spend a lot of time with women, but they most definitely seek each other out for breeding and the formations of families.
My fear is that in a few years the kernel writers (those old guys with long grey beards) will become extinct.
I’m a kernel writer, I’m just 14 and I’m not bearded and I’m not extinct, and, no, I’m not writing linux.
but I’m just one person out of millions
I’m a kernel writer, I’m just 14 and I’m not bearded and I’m not extinct, and, no, I’m not writing linux.
Hmm, and at 14 your not breading either, hopefully
so what are you writeing? Sorta full circle bring this topic back to something OS news related.
I love how people can be intimidated by quantum physics, genetics, or mathematics, but always feel competent enough to comment about sociology. Think about it. We have cured many of the world’s most basic diseases, but have yet to fix a single basic social problem. Human interactions are no where near as linear and simple as the author makes it out to be.
You idea reminds me of a theory about gay people.
Put all the gays on a single island and they’ll die and there won’t be any gays ever because they don’t reproduce…
Well that’s kind of the same things. Gays (as geeks ?) don’t reproduce. But you don’t have to have gay (or geeks) parents to be one, don’t you ?
the real truth is that successful people now delay reproduction and have fewer children…
What follows is somewhat of a ramble:
I think I’m an extremely talented programmer, if my certifications and BrainBench scores are any indication (I’m on several top-20 lists in the U.S. geographical area on BrainBench.) OK, enough tooting my own horn — what’s a geek? Is it defined by looks and style? You know what I did before I became a computer programmer? I was a nightclub doorman at a very exclusive house and techno club in the early ’90’s. (That was back when techno was *good*.) Barely touched a computer, because I was too busy worrying about looking cooler than the next bloke. Not very geeky, eh? It’s interesting that conventionally good-looking people are often assumed to be less intelligent than the traditionally “geeky” sort, and that somehow people with geek-level intelligence can’t be good-looking. Besides, many of my friends would probably be described as “geeky” but they do just fine in the relationship arena, although in my anecdotal experience they tend to have fewer partners (that I’m aware of).
Wasn’t TV supposed to do that? The Radio? The phone? Heck, people probably thought the printing press would bring the end of the world..
But I may be going too much off topic here…
I’m writing an OS that won’t be seen in the near future because I just won’t get it done and it will be too early for the concept of the OS
becuase they cant get laid
Wow, someone who says the OS their writting won’t get done. Good for you. I’m tired of seeing things about someone writing an OS or even a App and then it never happens and the were basicly saying stuff about it before anything had been done. Be carefull though with the atitude of it won’t get done you might just finish it.
last time i check
men prefer beautiful women
women prefer successful men – be it via sports, movies and tv, or computers.
fat, ugly women, and male losers r at a distinct evolutionary disadvantage
– unless socialism actually occurs nothing will change this
Following on from the last few comments, Geeks, are genrally compentent in one skill or another, and i would like to think they would be attracted, to someone with the same compentance in any skill, not just some airhead male or female. Im 16 still pretty young, and i’ve only had one serious girlfriend, whom i’m still with. She has no computing skills at all, except for basic word processing and net surfing skills. Shes actually a dancer, who in time wants to become a doctor/surgeon. Now as these take up a big chunk of our lifes, you may think we have nothing in common. But we think alike on alot of things, and theres not a eprson in this world who i enjoy talking to. Well what i’m trying to say is everyones a geek in some subject..even if the traditional view is a maths/computer geek. So if geeks are dying of that means the human race is dying?
Well i’m not really sure if any of that made sense of i, have actually said anything worth reading but i thought i would post anyway.:)
Will,
but i’m sure you can get my meaning, and sorry fot the second post
Modesty is reserved for Swedes, we sort of invented it…;-) Hmm…that doesn’t sound very modest of me…ouch, I guess I’m a poor representative for the nation of cabbage…:-)
Shall we get back on track and leave this kvasi-scientifical subject in the round archive, gentlemen?
“Shall we get back on track and leave this kvasi-scientifical subject in the round archive, gentlemen?”
I second that motion. I found the whole thing quite surreal.
I am self-confessed geek, but the truth is I know I’m good-lookin’.! To all my fellow geekoid’s love yourself, then the others may too!!!
By the way I used to date a model( she was on £500/day just walking on a cat walk!!!!)
……back to some coding! umm I’m hungry
Rayiner Hashem wrote:
>I love how people can be intimidated by quantum physics, genetics,
>or mathematics, but always feel competent enough to comment
>about sociology.
You have a good understanding of those subjects before you can comment and expect to be heard, that said there are plenty of comments about quantum physics on my web page 🙂
>Think about it. We have cured many of the world’s most basic diseases,
>but have yet to fix a single basic social problem.
Not so, some countries are a lot better at dealing with social problems than others. but I’d agree they’ve not been solved.
>Human interactions are no where near as linear and simple
>as the author makes it out to be.
I didn’t say they are linear or simple – note the use of the word “could” not “will”.
I pointed out a potential trend then extended it. It’s not meant to be a scientific paper, It’s an idea which I wrote up in 10 minutes.
That said I thought It’d get some interesting responses and indeed it did. The immediate comments about it being off-topic (OK, it’s about OS users not OSes) confirmed my contention that the web allows us to find a very specific group of people with the same interest. Also I note how many of the replies misintrepreted my comments (end of the world???) or even seemed uncomfortable with the entire subject, not the usual spirited talk you get on these boards…
I am a PhD currently working on human genetics and all I can say about the above article is NO, NO, NO, NO!
Why is it that people who obviously don’t have any training in a field seem to believe that their assumptions are correct when they have’t even done a little background reading on the topic?
If I made a load of stupid and incorrect comments about Linux on OS News or Slashdot then I’d get flamed real quick.
In genetic terms, Evolution = change in frequencies of variant genes (‘alleles’) over time.
The fact that tech worker children have a high incidence of autism does not mean that ‘geek genes’ exist and that geeks will inevitably die out. For a start, there may be a component of autism that is heritable but not genetic (i.e. the environment).
Secondly, presuming that the ‘geek genes’ are recessive (and that they actually exist) – there are probably plenty of non-geeks with geek genes who will reproduce and pass them on anyway. . .
What is happening now with computers and those who are proficient at using them is really no different than what happened with radio in the early part of the 20th century.
There were lots of younger adults, and some older, who built their own transmitters and sent messages to anyone who would listen. Anything from spec.s to just mindless rabble were fair game. I’m sure opinions arose about the future of such isolated people. But it was incorporated into life, like other technologies. We are at the beginning of a new trend in technology, which will probably fade into the culture like the previous ones. Speculation about the personal “content” of such people will continue to be guessed at for some years ahead.
just so you know, I enjoy history and psychology, in addition to programming and computing
All this talk about breeding is making me breathe funny…
:^P
In some sense, you could say I inherited geek genes, as both of my parents have certificates in CS (and on my mother’s side, works as a full-time programmer, on my father’s side occasionally does programming work in a mostly engineering job). My dad’s always been an electronics geek, my mom needed his help to get her CS Associates degree. My dad felt it was a waste of his time to further his education (because it wouldn’t result in an increase in pay), my mom probably could get a further degree in the field, but it would require an excessive amount of work for her to do so (and my parents are no longer married, so she wouldn’t have his help to fall back on).
On the other hand, I have a friend who’s got a good intuition for programming and is currently working towards his degree, but neither of his parents are technically skilled (his mom’s a nurse and his dad’s a retired Navy officer, neither can do much more than surf on a computer). Essentially the ability can be there but remain unused because of a person’s interests. My friend got into computers primarily because of games, and wants to be a graphics artist and/or game programmer, and has a natural talent for music and logic. If it hadn’t been for gaming, he may never have touched a computer and found that he was capable of being a good programmer, but if there’s a gene for this, it would’ve lived on, assuming he ever decides to become a father (and he’s one of those lucky guys that’s never had a problem getting the girl he wants, though he’s basically become disenchanted with women in part because of it, so it would be a choice that he makes in a sense).
As far as breeding geeks goes, I don’t think there’s much to worry about, as a great deal of it is learned rather than genetic. A natural understanding of things like logic and mathematics can help, but in the end interest in programming is what drives most of us, not some inherited ability. Besides, the increased tendency towards autism and even homosexuality could be pointed to as a natural result of overpopulation, reducing the breeding population in order to ward off continued overpopulation.
And why not add to the strange comments…
As I sit here at work, a lab assistant for the computing labs in a school, I listen to dozens of human beings savagely pounding, gorilla-like, on the electronic candy machine, trying (often in vain) to retrieve the sucrose-product what they paid for and selected… it makes me think all of this talk of evolution, geeks and such is funny…
I hate math and can’t really handle much of it (get me beyond addition and subtraction of whole numbers and I have trouble)… yet, here I am; a computer dude. I’ve programmed enough to learn it isn’t for me. Done tons of tech writing, know the internals pretty well and have a lot of deeper than average general knowledge about most tech things. Most of the folks I know claim that my knowledge is pretty geek-oriented. Luckilly I don’t look it… much (any more).
I don’t think computer building or code crunching for kernel writing is really “geek.” To me, a true geek is the person that can figure out measurements, percetages and programming code routines in his/her head… and is socially inept… AND knows all Star Trek episode titles and numbers my memorization… hah.
Anyway… If there’s a geek gene in me, it’s not getting passed on; I think my genes are aware of their inferiority and have caused me to not want to breed at all… I’ve got better things to spend my time and money on… Me!
FYI, the intelligence genes are always inherited from the mother, so if you want smart kids, get a smart wife/girlfriend
uhm… huh?
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