Borak: Geeks - Now Sexy

“Technosexual.” That's the term that Calvin Klein used when they launched their latest perfume, CKIN2U. It was, as the emcee of the night said, meant for those in their 20s who communicated and socialised using the internet, via MySpace, Facebook, instant messaging, Skype, and the tonnes of social networking apps available. I had to stop myself laughing out loudly at such a preposterous idea.

Talk about the revenge of the nerds. Ten years ago, communicating with friends using the computer was a nerdy thing to do, often attached with the social stigma of being a pimple-faced guy who couldn't talk to women face to face. I'm not a particularly geeky kid, but I did wait patiently for huge jpegs to download on dial-up speed—lolling around the fridge for a bite, have a Coke, and take a shower—before finally allowing Gillian Anderson FHM pictures to appear in all their 1024x768 glory. But now, according to the marketing team at CK, using your MySpace and chatting up girls through IM is cool. Gosh, I feel vindicated.

What a difference a decade makes. Being technosexual just illustrates the point of how fast culture has changed with the Internet, and the gap is expanding so fast now that it's going to be a matter of months and years, not decades, before you feel jaded and old. Trust me, if you think you're young, cool, and ahead of the curve now, you'll feel old in six years’ time when you're harping about the 452 friends you have on MySpace. (“myspace? LOL! dats lamez, granpa”).

The realisation that I'm an outdated geek came to me about four months ago (or in Web 2.0 terms, several hundred startups) when Sarah, our editorial assistant, extolled how awesome Twitter was. Twitter, for those of you who are even less technologically inclined than I am (how sad is that?) is a blog-like service where you'd write in—through e-mail, SMS, or regular posting—a short sentence or two about where you are right now, what you're doing at the moment, etc., and publish it on your public twitter page.

I thought it'd never take off. I struggled to come to terms with the purpose of regular I-ate-chicken-for-lunch-blogs, so how lame can twitter be? Or what about Tumblog, a shorter version of a blog? “Aren't all the same things?” I began to rant. Why can't these kids stick to one thing? One day it's MySpace, another day it's Facebook, and let's not even go on about Friendster (four years ago the hippest site in town but now a community for tech lepers). And why the need for this public profiling in the first place? Don't you value the privacy of not having to blog about how your boss sucks or how the creepy dude from marketing brushed your ass? I just don't get it.

The instance that I didn't get it was the moment when I felt like I an old man screaming for the kids to get off the lawn. I started to see how my dad, in his 60s now, would exclaim infuriatingly how a web browser is a web browser, why can't he operate his Thunderbird e-mail client right, or what's this whole “blog thing” that everyone's been talking about. Now, I found myself in a similar situation—I didn't get these kids. I couldn't understand them.

What disturbed me most was that Sarah's just 21. That's just seven years younger than me, and if I feel outdated, I can't imagine how I'd feel when my seven-month-old nephew grows up. It's impossible to tell what's cool or not by then—if a decade can turn a nerd into the epitome of a CK hunk, I bet Sarah, by then, would feel old an while I would gripe about the good ol' days of Web 2.0.

I heard Linda Stone, a former VP at Microsoft, give a talk at the Emerging Technology Conference about the consequences of the further fragmentation of our attention span as the onslaught of social networking and media overload continues. It's so divided now, she says, that we're on the cusp of having the cultural pendulum will swing back against social networking, against having our lives so publically known. We're going to be more concerned about our privacy, she says, and we'll abandon this concept of being so socially open. This talk was given in 2006, and there's hardly a whisper of this swing. Facebook opened up to the public, blogs are increasing by the hundreds each day, and Web 2.0 services are popping up faster than you can say MySpace killer.

But then again, with kids these days, you'll never know what's gonna happen in five years. “MySpace users” could be just another term for lame stalkers, Web 2.0 a codgy old term, and you could have just have 10 buddies in your super secret IM list. Hey, if Calvin Klein says I'm sexy, anything's possible.

John Lim has a blog, MySpace, Facebook, and Friendster accounts, but can't seem to be bothered with all of them. Bite me.