This gentleman, a professor at M.I.T., compiled a list of ‘geek culture references’ from The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz. You can measure your own geekitude by counting the number of references you can identify.
Me? 116. My age gives an advantage I think, since many of the references date to the 70s and 80s.
Also – robots.
UPDATE:
A quick addition i.e. more robots. I really like this one, titled Titanticus. It looks like something that could stride out of the Fore River Shipyard.
Fun list, but I only scored 94. Although a number more seem to hover at the edge of familiarity.
Others I just find perplexing. Does Lou Reed have some geek cachet that I’m not aware of?
For musical geekdom I would have included something more along the lines of Karn Evil 9, Gamehendge or By-Tor and the Snowdog.
And yes, this is a 70s heavy list. I wonder what the young geeks of today are into?
I’m not sure about the Lou Reed thing either.
Giving a quick and dirty count I come up with 90 which seems odd for a 70′s child and yes – very heavy 70-80′s list.
I also am perplexed by the Lou Reed thing and believe it may be more of a gauge of if you actually have knowledge of this person’s existence. JMHO though. Have to see if there’s any geeky Lou Reed thing I’ve missed.
Seems somethings are really just on the tip of realization for me as well…maybe with age our geekdom overflows with info and we push out the rest? Don’t know.