From: Kendall Clark <kendall at monkeyfist.com>
>>>>> "Carrol" == Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> writes:
Carrol> "Geek" originally meant a carnival performer who bit the
Carrol> head off of chickens or snakes. How did it come to mean
Carrol> professionals in technology?
Hmm, I'm not sure of a precise answer for this, but I can offer a quote from the Jargon File (a kind of Internet, Unix community glossary that's decently informative):
computer geek n.
1. One who eats (computer) bugs for a living. One who fulfills all the dreariest negative stereotypes about hackers: an asocial, malodorous, pasty-faced monomaniac with all the personality of a cheese grater. Cannot be used by outsiders without implied insult to all hackers... A computer geek may be either a fundamentally clueless individual or a proto-hacker in larval stage. Also called `turbo nerd', `turbo geek'. See also propeller head, clustergeeking, geek out, wannabee, terminal junkie, spod, weenie. 2. Some self-described computer geeks use this term in a positive sense and protest sense 1 (this seems to have been a post-1990 development). For one such argument, see http://www.darkwater.com/omni/geek.html. See also geek code.
Jargon File can be found at <http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/jargon/>.
I used the word emblematically in the essay I posted here; I'm a computer programmer, so that's the area of technical work in which I confront moral dilemmas about funding, research, and evil institutions. I imagine that for some kinds of scientists, engineers, and other technical people, the moral dilemma is largely the same, even if they don't identify themselves as 'geeks'.
In my experience, the word is used widely now by insiders with a certain perverse pride; its negative connotations seem to have largely drained away as a result, I would imagine, of fairly technical folks having *massive* net worths, buying sports franchises, small cities, etc.
Best, Kendall Clark -- THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS http://monkeyfist.com/