Revenge of the Nerds
What really is a nerd? Did you know that the first use of the word nerd is in a Dr. Seuss book? Yes indeed. It comes from If I Ran the Zoo in which the main character, Gerald McGrew explains that he would want to collect the following creatures, a Nerkle, a Nerd, and a Seersucker too.” That book was written in 1950, but it doesn’t really seem to have anything to do with the modern day nerd who is an unlikely candidate for a zoo creature, although he is a certainly fascinating creature none the less.
In 1951 Newsweek reported that the word nerd was a new way by which a person could refer to a “drip” or a “square” in the city of Detroit, Michigan. An alternative spelling was used by the famous science fiction writer Philip K. Dick, using the word nurd in a story he wrote in 1973. There is anecdotal evidence that the alternative spelling of nurd is a shortening of the word “knurd” which is “drunk” spelled backwards, since a nurd is the opposite of a “partier,” shunning the wild parties characteristic of college campus life for the life of a “knurd,” studious and socially awkward.
Believe it or not, due to a lot of bad publicity, many people seem to think that being a nerd is a negative thing. Well I think all of us reading “Nerd Universe” would beg to differ. In case you have been feeling a need to get up and do something about the bad press we’ve gotten, don’t bother. Its been done already. Back in 1993 Gerald Sussman made it his business to help nerds feel proud about themselves, instilling nerd pride in nerds whenever he was given the opportunity. For instance, in an interview he gave to Katie Hafner of the New York Times on August 29, 1993 Gerald Sussman said,
“My idea is to present an image to children that it is good to be intellectual, and not to care about the peer pressures to be anti-intellectual. I want every child to turn into a nerd – where that means someone who prefers studying and learning to competing for social dominance, which can unfortunately cause the downward spiral into social rejection.”
So nerds, unite. You gave the world just about every electronic device, computer technology, search engines and anything else that distinguishes the 21st century as the “Age of Information.” Oh and fun electronic gadgets, too.