Week 3: Geeking Out

I fully admit to many different types of 'geekery.' I play video games, I read all kinds of books (including comic books), I love computers and technology, I adore old zombie movies. Heck, I honestly don't even know how many times I've read the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Seriously. I'm a giant geek. Thanks to the Internet, though, I don't have to feel ostracized by all the cool people.

I spend tons of time browsing several technology/gadget-oriented web-sites and their forums. Some of my favorites include CNet, Engadget and Gizmodo. These sites, however, pale in importance to the resource of resources, the apex of Internet geekery, TWiT. TWiT, which stands for "This Week in Tech," is a podcasting network run by Leo "The Tech Guy" Laporte. They produce multiple netcasts/podcasts covering a wide range of technological sub-genres. It's really geeky, and I love it. The forums/chatrooms are vibrant and informative.

One of the most interesting aspects of TWiT's coverage is their absolute, obsessive detail. This sort of in-depth coverage of a niche market of information is the real service they provide. To that end, it should be obvious that only the Postmodern perspective would welcome their sort of involvement in the public sphere. Clearly, in-depth analysis of new technology and gadgets would be seen as trivial by both Modernists and Postmodernists alike, but only the Postmodernists would consider this trivial information worthy of entering the public sphere.

I think that one of the truly valuable innovations of the Internet is its extreme fragmentation, a perspective that would surely alienate the Modernists. Where more unified resources like a newspaper are relatively difficult to whittle down only to the information that the reader is interested in, the Internet has an entire world of focused, narrow niches of information just a few clicks away. What could be more Postmodern (and geeky) than that?