Tired of being called a geek?

[Quoted] It's always pissed me off that the mainstream media refers to us as computer nerds and geeks and I've always wanted to do something about it.

On the day after the WTC attacks I sent a letter to 22 major newspapers in the United States. In it, I made the point that if the air traffic control system had been designed properly it would have had a feature that would have allowed the air traffic controllers to over-ride the controls in the cockpit and fly the planes by remote control once they had determined that the planes had left their intended flight path.

I then made the point that a lot of things in the US are not designed properly because technically savvy engineers are not given the respect they need in order to be the ones to make these sorts of decisions. And that this is due, in large part, to the false negative images of us created by the media.

I can't be sure if the letter had an impact, but references to computer nerds and geeks in the two papers I read (The New York Times and the San Francisco Chronicle) seemed to drop off dramatically in the weeks after the attack. To my dismay, I've seen a couple of "computer nerd" references in the Times in the last couple of days.

If you are tired of being called a geek and want to see it stopped please join me. My idea is to create a network of people that will identify those in the media that are responsible for creating these negative images, to let them know the impact it is having on our ability to see that things are designed properly, and to let them know that we don't appreciate it.

I think we're at a unique point in time and that this network could be very effective in changing the image of our profession to one that engenders more respect.

Please send me an email if you want to be a part of this.

Regards,
Brad McMillan
mcmillan_at_viselect.com Received on Tue Oct 09 2001 - 21:22:33 CEST