How Pioneers in Technology are Different

While reading Amy Armitage of Lunartic’s interview with Eric Meyer, the biggest advocate of CSS, it became obvious that there is something completely different about pioneers in computers and technology. Although we can’t testify to having personally spoken to explorers and inventors in other fields, we think it’s highly unlikely that they’re as down-to-earth normal as the “geeks” and “nerds” that bring computing and technology to the next stage.

Reading through the interview, you can’t honestly tell that this is man is the epitome of what some would call “geek;” after all, you can’t write six books on a topic without being some kind of half-human half-android hybrid, can you? But geek or not, here’s a guy that lives in Cleveland, has a BA in History, and had his own radio show for an entire decade.

You can’t mention Lunartic’s interview with Eric without seeing Lunartics other interview, this one with Craig Newmark, founder of the now-very-famous Craig’s List. This guy is rich, and owns one of the most successful (and, as much as we hate to throw this phrase around,) “Web 2.0” sites around. Yet reading through his interview, you would never know:

What do you want to be when you grow up?

I don’t plan to grow up.

There’s something different about technology that keeps its pioneers real and in-touch with the world at large. Maybe it has to do with the fact that technology exists only to serve,¹ unlike some of the other fields such as medicine, astronomy, physics, and chemistry; all of which exist in and of themselves, whether the common man has need of them or not.

It’s interesting how it’s the guys that are the “geeks” in high school and the “social misfits” later on in life (not pointing to anyone in particular.. just saying!) become that serve the community and demand their respect, money, and service to the keep the world going and technology evolving in ways no one ever imagined.

Of course, none of this would be obvious if it weren’t for the interviewer picking and phrasing the right questions in the right way and springing them on the interviewee – thank you Lunartics for such an inspired interview! :)

1. Until, of course, the day comes when robots exist that demand our respect and servitude… ↩