Most of the time spent wrestling with technologies that don’t quite work yet is just not worth it for end users, however much fun it is for nerds. [Douglas Adams (2005) via azquotes.com]
When I tell people I’m with Nerdchurch, maybe a seventh of the time someone asks what a nerd is.
How would you explain it?
Douglas Adams left us with a trove of insights, including the observation quoted above. If you enjoy wrestling, tinkering, hacking, kludging, improvising, noodling, working-around, cajoling or jailbreaking a technology to do something that most people would never have the patience to try to make it do… you just might be a nerd.
If this is you, you already know. You may not have patience for every task in life, but if a technology and a certain result interest you, you will leave convenience and any definition of reasonable effort by the wayside in order to make it do what you want, or strike out swinging.
In 9th grade, I spent hours writing BASICA code to get the IBM PCs at the school computer lab to play Christmas carols. This entailed calculating and entering frequency and duration values for every note, which was tedious in the extreme. I didn’t mind. Of course BASICA ‘music’ using the PC-XT’s audio capabilities was monophonic. But it was possible to code separately for melody and harmony parts to run on multiple computers–which involved recruiting other humans to launch in sync, approximately. “O Come, All Ye Faithful” filled the room on those tinny built-in speakers. It was so cool. I still can’t get the smile off my face remembering it.
Yes, I may have been a nerd. Even though I never solved a Rubik’s cube without taking it apart. Mock who will.
Then said he unto them, Therefore every scribe which is instructed unto the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is an householder, which bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old. (Matthew 13:52)
I admit, you have to stretch the concept and maybe squint to see nerds in the New Testament. But I see nerds in this verse. Almost every mention of scribes in the four gospels depicts them as critics or opponents of Jesus and his disciples. But in this microparable from Jesus, he says that when a scribe is instructed unto the kingdom of heaven, something so cool happens. The kingdom-instructed scribe becomes like a householder bringing out treasures, new and old. New things that have not become mass-marketable. Old things that are widely seen as obsolete, but embody ingenuity and often a quality that the newer models lack. (Vinyl has been outselling CDs for a couple of years now.) If you’re a nerd, some of your greatest treasures might not make sense to the Muggles. You value them anyway.
There’s more to Nerdchurch than nerds wanting to bless other nerds. That’s enough of a reason, but there’s more to it. There’s a special potential that Jesus sees in people whose brains work a little differently, whose interests become rabbit holes or wormholes into new and old discoveries that can be made to work with tenacity and engagement and love. To them, it’s worth it. It’s fun.
Welcome to Nerdchurch.
🤓⛪👯