Product Description

Jesse and Eric were geeks: suspicious of authority figures, proud of their status as outsiders, fervent in their belief in the positive power of technology. High school had been an unbearable experience and their small-town Idaho families had been torn apart by hard times. On the fringe of society, they had almost no social lives and little to look forward to. They spent every spare cent on their computers and every spare moment on-line. Nobody ever spoke of them, much less for them.

But then they met Jon Katz, a roving journalist who suggested that, in the age of geek impresario Bill Gates, Jesse and Eric had marketable skills that could get them out of Idaho and pave the way to a better life. So they bravely set out to conquer Chicago—geek style. Told with Katz’s trademark charm and sparkle, Geeks is a humorous, moving tale of triumph over adversity and self-acceptance that delivers two irresistible heroes for the digital age and reveals the very human face of technology.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #965264 in Books
• Published on: 2001-02-20
• Released on: 2001-02-20
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

From Amazon.com
Teenage hackers Jesse Dailey and Eric Twilegar are the heroes of Geeks: How Two Lost Boys Rode the Internet out of Idaho, a thoughtful, affecting pop ethnography--and heroes is exactly what Jon Katz wants you to see them as. To the rest of the world, themselves included, they are geeks, which is a complicated thing to be these days. With the rise of the networked economy, the world and its wealth have become increasingly dependent on the expertise of Star Wars-loving, cola-swilling propellerheads everywhere. Yet at the same time, the typical geek--especially the typical adolescent geek--remains a consummate outsider, with passions for technological arcana that are both alienating and empowering.

Katz, a writer for both Rolling Stone and the profoundly geeky Web site Slashdot.org, does a fine job of mapping this ambiguous new state of affairs (the Geek Ascendancy, he calls it). But the book's heart and soul is the well-told tale of Jesse and Eric's adventurous flight from lonely, dead-end lives in Idaho Mormon country to brighter possibilities in Chicago.

Katz argues that this great escape couldn't have happened without the networks (both social and technological) that are the lifeblood of '90s geekdom, but he doesn't let his celebratory argument get in the way of the story. Although he's a tireless advocate for geeks (the last chapters retrace his impassioned advocacy for brooding teenage weirdos in the face of post-Columbine media attacks), he presents their culture warts and all, with its tendencies toward social awkwardness and arrogance recognizably intact. He doesn't demand your sympathy for his heroes and their world--but he wins it anyway, by bringing them vividly and honestly to life. --Julian Dibbell

From Publishers Weekly
While promoting his book Virtuous Reality, journalist Katz was introduced to the world of "geeks," those smart, technically savvy misfits who are ostracized by their high school peers. Katz wrote in his column on the slashdot.org Web site about the isolation, exclusion and maltreatment--from dirty looks to brutal beatings--such kids routinely face. Tens of thousands of anguished e-mails confirmed his story. One of the e-mailers was Jesse Dailey, a working-class 19-year-old trapped in rural Idaho, where he and his friend Eric Twilegar fixed computers for a living, and hacked and surfed the Web, convinced that they were losers and outcasts. Katz, also a writer for Wired and Rolling Stone, traveled to Idaho to meet the pair, intending to chronicle their lives. He wound up encouraging and sometimes assisting Jesse and Eric as they tried to improve their lives by moving to Chicago, where they sought better jobs and even considered applying to college. Sometimes intensely earnest, Katz cuts back and forth between Jesse and Eric's story and more general discussions of the geeks' condition. Over the course of the book, Jesse and Eric come to represent geeks' collective weaknesses and strengths. While the bulk of the book has broad social and educational implications (concerning the fate of bright kids who don't come from socially and educationally privileged backgrounds), it is a highly personal tale: Katz takes us inside the lives of these two young men, shows us their sense of isolation, their complete absorption in the cyberworld, their distrust of authority and institutions, and their attempts to negotiate an often hostile society. He breaks through the stereotype and humanizes this outcast group of young people. (Feb.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal
YA-Katz sets out to explain geek culture by tracing the life stories of two 19 year olds from Caldwell, ID. The young men had no money, no family support, but they did have a riveting passion for computers. A year after graduating from high school, they were desperately seeking relief from their dead-end jobs. By chance, the author received a moving e-mail message from one of them and traveled to Idaho to meet them. This meeting is the start of the boys' journey and is the book's beginning. Early on, readers realize that the biggest roadblock to their success was the educational system and the intolerance of others toward those not following the traditional direction of society. Students will identify with the situation. Many will see themselves in much of this book and realize that they can survive-and flourish-in real life. Geeks is well written, thought provoking, and attitude changing. Readers may not agree with all of Katz's sermonizing, but they will agree that America needs ideas like his to serve as a catalyst for change and progress. Above all, Geeks will bring about much needed thinking and dialogue about the experience of going to high school and the price people have paid and are paying for being different. Students will enjoy Katz's argument that even if society does not acknowledge their varying needs, geeks will ultimately ascend.
Linda A. Vretos, Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, Alexandria, VA
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Dated
Now that the Internet boom is over, and the Internet jobs profiled in this book have gone from most desirable to least desirable, it would be interesting if Katz would add an update - are Josh and Eric still working? Have they moved on to other things (such as Katz himself, who's now writing about dogs)? Or have they returned broke and unemployed to convenience store jobs in Idaho?

"The Net is their only net."
Jon Katz's latest book goes a long way to explain the recently-emerged member of society known as the geek by following two recent high school graduates, Jesse and Eric, out of the hinterlands of Idaho and into the corporate world of Chicago. Through the trials of the two boys, Katz inadvertently finds himself in the middle of the geeks' story.

The recent rise and rise of the Geek has been documented in several different ways. Witness "Pirates of Silicon Valley," Robert X. Cringely's columns and shows, the success of Wired (and Slashdot, for that matter) and - lest we forget - the reign of Bill Gates, to name a few examples. No one has delved so deep thus far into the Geek realm as Slashdot's own resident journailst/author Jon Katz.

Straight outta Idaho, Geeks tells the story of Jesse Dailey and Eric Twilegar, two textbook examples of the modern geek. They both work in small retail outlets in nearby microtowns (one in a computer repair shop the other in an Office Max - the closest thing to geek-friendly jobs in the area), are ostracized by the local Mormon moral majority, spend most of their time online and are complete outcasts for the most part. If it wasn't for one hip teacher who sees the obvious unharnessed potential of these two and their few friends and starts a Geek Club, Jesse and Eric might end up like so many other geeks: completely overlooked and unrecognized for their talents. By putting added emphasis on this aspect of the story, Katz brings to light the gaping hole in our education system through which most geeks fall. And as he showed in spades with his "Hellmouth" columns, lately that hole has been of the 'black hole' variety (see also the countless email messages from the Hellmouth included in Geeks).

On the flipside, Jesse and Eric are (like most other geeks) multitasking geniuses. They read, listen to music, chat with friends online, talk on the phone, download files, trade MP3s, as well as eat and drink, all while sitting in front of their computers. A dizzying deluge of information screaming hither and thither on the screen, over the phone lines, through the modem and through the air. Extreme concentration and juggling skills as such are typically rewarded highly when they are known about.

So, post-Hellmouth, Jesse and Eric realize that they can go anywhere and that anywhere else would probably be better. With minor guidance from Katz, the boys end up in Chicago. Jon Katz draws lines and crosses them throughout the book. He wants to document the story, but at the same time he identifies very strongly with Jesse and Eric. He doesn't want to see them fail despite their high hopes and thin ropes, and as he says, "the Net is their only net." In addition to their tribulations at school, Jesse and Eric have minimal home lives and suffer a severe lack of family involvement in their decisions. As he documents their move from small town to big city, Katz struggles to stay out of the story. But he flies into Chicago to be there the day of Jesse's first job interview and he goes to bat for both boys when it comes to their aspirations for college. Making sure there were two less geeks lost in the cracks of America became more important to Katz than the integrity of his report. A fact he openly admits repeatedly in the book.

During his following of the story of these two geeks, Katz finds that he fits the description of "geek" himself as much as either of them do. Now if only more older geeks would step up for the new generation of geeks instead of ostracizing them. The book Geeks is both good read and a good example. Good job, Jon Katz. Twice.

Great read for geeks everywhere
As soon as you finish reading this book, you will want to be a geek. Or at least, you'll want to learn more about the world of geeks.

This book follows the journey of Jesse and Eric, two self-proclaimed geeks from Idaho who are stuck in dead-end jobs and spend their lives on the computer, playing games, surfing the net, and chatting with friends. When Jesse writes to Jon Katz, a journalist who writes and article on geeks, their world begins to change. Katz visits the boys in their town and sees what their world is like. He mentions that with computer skills like theirs they could get jobs anywhere, and the games begin.

This book starts off a little slow with the introduction of how Katz meets the 'geeks' from the title, but as soon as Jesse and Eric begin their journey, you are sucked in completely. I had a difficult time putting down the book at night, even when it was 2 am, and I had to be up early the next morning. You become so engrossed in how their lives turn out. It is not hard to care for the boys, because even though they are geeks, you find that you have a little bit of geek in you too.

Might be a little advanced for children younger than 13 or 14, but if they are in to computers, this could be a great tool to let them know what their opportunities are in life.