Saturday, April 29, 2006

Sharing the joys of geekhood, in a non-geek way

Okay, I know "geekhood" is not a word, but bear with me here.

All us people doing Masters and PhD degrees are not in it for the 'A' grades. We're not in it for fear of the real world. We're not in it because we hate our countries and the grad admit is our ticket to Freedomland.

We're in it because we love it.

And we love it because we learn and gain insights into so many things, that we don't feel like stopping. I'm not talking merely about our personal research areas, I'm talking about all the things we learn about just by being in a high-quality learning environment.

The hard part of this is that it's extremely difficult to share our knowledge with others. For one thing, it's hard to explain such things without being long-winded about it, and for another, not everyone is interesting in knowing everything. If I had a penny for every time someone groaned when a geek started on an explanation, I'd be a billionaire.

But today, thanks to the role of media and the effect of technology, a lot of geeky science/tech subjects are familiar to the average person, and people evince more interest in learning about things they are somewhat familiar with. I would love to explain what little I have understood about, say, Nash Equilibria (Beautiful Mind) or Antimatter (Angels and Demons) or Chaos (Butterfly Effect) and so on... and talk about the connections I have made in understanding the Nature of Science, and the Science in Nature. Actually, I wish a more knowledgeable person would do that, so that I can lean back and read, but information on such diverse topics is seldom found in one place and written in a fashion readable to someone in a different field.

Anyway, I have decided to give myself the motivation to read on such things, by starting a separate blog for it. As I was saying, I think people are more receptive to scientific geek-talk these days, so there is a good chance that some people may read it or even contribute posts. I think the key would be to explain stuff in a manner that anybody with a high school education can understand.

I would like to know if there are tech or science people out there reading this, who are enthusiastic about sharing knowledge on technical topics that they think the general blogging community would be interested in reading. If yes, please drop a comment here and I'll be sure to get back to you for an article later. Also do let me know if you are aware of existing blogs with a similar mission. If more than a couple of people are interested in contributing, I'll make it a group blog, else I'll make it a personal blog and absorb it into my little world :)

Cheers,
Prashanth.

10 comments:

Divster said...

sounds good to me.

Anonymous said...

SP~ I was waiting at College Av the other day for a bus, and I see this guy wearing a t-shirt saying *Grad School is the snooze button on life*.. Although I can't say that I am much of a believer of *t-shirt philosophy*, still some food for thought??

Primalsoup said...

That doesn't sound something there for me! :) Good luck!

alraqs said...

hmm, good summer project it looks like :)

Born a Libran said...

Well written... Will be a regular visitor to your new blog...

Prashanth said...

O-kay... so its going to be a solo summer project... this is going to be interesting...

Anonymous said...

Hi SP, great idea! Maybe I can help, if you think anybody can be interested in transportation ;) Lava.

Vc said...

I'm in .. psst i hope i get to talk about "Weird creatures and the Geekhood"....

Artful Badger said...

Sounds interesting. But, it is very important to get things that people are going to be interested in. PopSci type of stuff..

Sundeep said...

the science blog sounds good to me, but going by your latest post, I get the feeling you are trying to do too many things at the same time :). Anyway, as long as you are confident about doing so many things at once.