Russ Swan

摘要

Enjoy the moment, fellow eggheads, for it will not last. Our star has been in the ascendant, but the signs are now clear and unmistakeable: we have reached peak geek. I've been around the block enough times to remember when it was deeply uncool to be a scientist or engineer, or to admit even a passing interest in anything remotely nerdy. To be in with the crowd, one would affect an interest in football (an activity involving a couple of dozen people being paid a lot of cash to chase a ball around a field, apparently), and other blokey pastimes. Motorbikes, beer, plastering, that sort of thing. Women of a geekish tendency had it even worse. At least the guys could do mental arithmetic, as long as this was only applied to darts scores or bookmakers' odds. Women were expected to shrug their shoulders, flutter their eyelashes, and insist at every opportunity that they just couldn't do sums. Dark days indeed.