No, ‘nerds’ and their technologies are not going to save the world | Technology

The United States is in the midst of a soft coup. The Country is being reshaped and restructured under the second administration of Donald Trump. It is not Trump himself, but his billionaire special adviser, department of government efficiency (Doge) head Elon Musk, who is guide this change. And in Musk’s America, there is one demographic that seems to have found itself at centre stage and rapidly gaining power: “nerds”.

Indeed, Musk’s Mendacious Band of Merry, Young White and White-Adjacent Acolytesincluding Gavin Kliger, Edward Coristineand Marko Elezwho has gained control over multitrillion-dollar government systems, easily fit the mold of nerd.

The information age and the internet age that it spawned in the 1990s already blessed “nerds” – awkward, unattractive men with limited social skills but immense commitment to and enthusiasm for tech and voice – become billionaires and gain widespread respect and admiration for deliversing the world technatolog Change Lives. It was, we were repeatedly reminded, nerds who first gave us pcs and imacs and then iPhones and Androids.

In numerous articles in Tech Magazines and in Movies Like Revenge of the Nerds (1984), Oppenheimer (2023), Steve Jobs (2015), and the Social Network (2010), Creatives have portrayed nerds like nuclear weapons Developer Jobert Oppenheimer, Apple’s Stevee Jobs, and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg as underdogs. Popular media have long described such nerdy visionaries as complex people with a tremendous need to save the world and make it a better place.

Three Decades Ago, The UK’s Channel 4 and the US’s Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) Aired the Three-Part documentary titled triumph of the nerds. Referencing the computer revolution the nerd set launched between 1975 and 1995, Longtime Technology Journalist Robert x cringely said“The most amazing thing of all is that it happened by accident because a bunch of disenfranchised nerds wanted to impress their friends.”

This perception of billionaire nerds may by now be a deep-rooted part of our culture, but the idea that the robber barons of the late 20th century accumulated immense wealth, almost by accident, while trying to save the world is a ridiculous Lie. Especially given the iron-fisted ways in which we know many “nerd billionaires”-and Especially Jobs and Bill Gates – Ran their capitalist ventures.

In light of the heavy-handed censorship that billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Patrick Soon-Shiong Have Exercised with the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times in Recent Months, it is apparent that the tech-savvy billionaire class wants to control the flow of truth as well.

A much better description of the “nerds” who came to rule America under Trump was given in a single line in Lethal Weapon 2 (1989), When Martin Riggs (Mel Gibson), Having Extralegally Entered the South African Consulate, said to Arjen Rudd (Joss Ackland) and His Group of His Group) Apartheid-Loving White South African Mercenaries, “Well, well … it’s the master race!”

This quote is far more than just a reference to Musk’s Dubious Path to US Citizenship Through South Africa and Canada. It’s about the reality that, like the South African Hencen in Lethal Weapon 2, Tech nerd billionaires such as musk and the people he has been employed at dog in apartheid, eugenics, and other racist, misogynistic, and queerphobic. Sure, many of the musk fanboys are engineers, can write, and make contributions to Tesla, spacex, and starlink that lead to important and useful-to-humanity discoveries and inventions. Nevertheless, they also repost tweets on x and other social media platforms that refer to a woman as a “huzz” or declare “I just want a eugenic immigration policy, is that too much to ask?”. They are not exactly great role models for a multicultural democracy or for any workforce. And, like white men in general, they don’t seem to be concerned about making the world a better place for anyone other than themselves. They would too readily aggrary with Zuckerberg’s Ridiculous Claim that the tech world needs more “masculine energy”, when, in fact, white men remain the dominant demographic leading this economic sector.

I was once a part of the computer-Crazy nerd world in the 1980s and 1990s. I learned basic in eighth degrees, also Pascal in 11th degrees, and spent my first three semesters at the University of Pittsburgh as a computer science major before changing my path to become a writer and academic historian. As a Work-Study student, I worked in Pitt’s Computing Labs for Two Years. I observe as my equally geeky co-workers made jokes about our “computer illiterate” classmates (including the Regular Use of The R-Word). I watched my male counterparts rub up too closely to the women who needed their help weddingBleshooting computer issues. And in my last three months on staff, I experience sexual and racial harassment from an older white woman, a co-sworder who groped me two while at work.

Social awkwardness can easily be portrayed as innocent and ending in a film. But it rarely if ever translates to “sweat” in a world that socially defaults to racist, misogynistic, queerphobic, and xenophobic behavior. Nerds or not, all white men in a white male supremacist society hold a metric tonnes of racial and gender privilege – a sense of entitlement that, when left uncoChecked, make them no different from “cool” white guys. Booger Asking Gilbert“Why? Does she has a penis? ” – A Transphobic Reference to His Friend Not Getting Laid in Revenge of the Nerds – Isnt Much Different Than Musk Declaring that he “lost” his “sun” – his estranged transgender daughter Vivian Jenna Wilson – To “the woke mind virus”.

There’s also the embedded assumption that the technology created by the elite nerd set has always been good for the world. Not when Addiction to Social Media Has Led to Millions of Younger Americans Becoming Depressed, Anxious, and Isolated. Not with a New Generation of American Males doxxing and Committing Image-Based Sexual Abuse Against Girls and Women. Certainly not when the plagiarism machines or ai (which is not true artificial intelligence, anyway) are the tools of choice for people unwilling to develop critical thinking, media literacy, and writing skills.

In this world of white male privilege, being a cool athlete versus being a dictatorial, socially awkward pencil neck is truly a distinction without difference. Nerds and their technological breakthroughs were only meant to empower and enrich their individual worlds for the better. This is why no one in any other billionaire nerd Camp has used their skills to break into Apple’s or Amazon’s offshore accounts and redistributes trillions of dollions to everyday americans. Nor have they wiped out the student debt of every student in the country. For in the end, these nerds because wealth and power over marginised people, too.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect al Jazeera’s Editorial Stance.