Know yourself: Geek or nerd?
Monday, May 15th, 2006
Are you a geek or a nerd?
If you are reading this post on Hawk Wings, you are one or the other.
A blog about a niche email client within a niche OS within the niche market of computing (a niche of a niche of a niche) pretty well meets the criteria of obsession and narrow focus that has defined these two words.
A post on progressive: what the blog? explores the semantics 
of geeks and nerds.
After pointing out that dictionary definitions confuse the two, the writer attempts a distinction:
A geek has a narrower interest span than a nerd. A geek is extremely good at one thing and also knows a bit more than average about many other interests he or she might have. A geek is also more outgoing and more social than nerds. A geek is more ’self oriented’ while a nerd is ‘interest oriented’. A geek may give up or switch to some other interest if thre are benifits in it, but a nerd will not - if he did he would fall under the geek definition.
Australia must follow the UK on this, I think, where the usage differs. As a commentator on the progressive post points out, people in the UK ‘tend to use “geek” to mean “one who has keen interest in computers, telephony, science fiction etc” and “nerd” to mean “a geek too far”‘.
That seems to fit. Geeks can at least see normality in the middle distance, whilst for nerds it is already lost over the horizon.
It’s a better distinction than my first thought: Steve Jobs is a geek, but Bill Gates is a nerd. And than my second: Geeks are GUI (Mail.app, Thunderbird) and nerds are command line (mutt, pine). Life is more complicated than that.
[Via the excellent Daring Fireball Linked List ]
