Geeks

From Jon Katz’s interesting, very readable book, published nine years ago, Geeks: How Two Lost Boys Rode the Internet Out of Idaho:

But life for geeks has been transformed. For one thing, they aren’t alone anymore. They probably still loathe school, but when they go home, their computers are passports to a vast, complex, and communicative world, one still largely invisible to many parents educators, and other adults.

High priests in journalism and culture are fond of fussing that the Internet is dislocating, isolating, dangerous. After spending so much time online, talking to so many kids like Jesse and Eric, I view it differently. It isn’t the Net that drives kids into isolation or creates lonely children; the Net attracts lonely and ignored kids, and puts them in touch with others just like them.