Afterword: Coda

Abstract

Though narrated as if generic and universal, the mostly US-focused literature I surveyed carries political assumptions and ideological viewpoints that are specific to the fictive ethnicity of geeks and specific to cyber-utopian and techno-libertarian worldviews of mainstream journalists and media commentators on tech. By taking apart some of the narratives, we understand how they create the effects that they do, and we can question them and think about alternative narrativisation. I claim that understanding geek culture requires that we engage with the stories that geeks tell and that others tell about them. Popular geek storytelling expresses identities and relations, building a world from a range of themes and master plots, ranging from neoliberal individualism to the Silicon Valley American Dream. There are overlaps and crossovers and conflicts in geek culture that are too subtle to be captured by either the broad brush of quick-fire journalism or the sensationalist urges of print fiction or box-office film.