Pragmatic Geek

I’ve named this blog “Pragmatic Geek.”  At my core, I’m a pragmatist, and these are thoughts about how that overlaps with being a geek.  (I’m also a realistic enough to realize that my thoughts aren’t that unique, and this could likely be “another blog.”)

Pragmatic: concerned with making decisions and actions that are useful in practice, not just theory

Geek: an expert in a technical field, particularly to do with computers.

As a pragmatic geek, I

• don’t dig into every latest buzzword.  The “new” is often just a rebranded “old.”  Rich Internet Apps are just yesterday’s green screens.
• don’t covet the latest gadgets.  There’s a tradeoff between blowing your money on the latest, when the last generation stuff ends up collecting dust after it has lots its “shininess.”
• wait for convergence.  I don’t want to carry one of every device with me, but I’ll be ecstatic when I can get a two-fer. (or three-fer)
• demand good design.  Technology should be enjoyable to use on many fronts, not just because it does the job faster than the competition.
• require a good return on “investment.”  Investment is in quotes, since it’s not just about cash, it’s about the effort spent to get the return.  

I welcome you to link to the RSS, and see the updates as they happen.  

-benJ

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 25th, 2008 at 6:05 pm and is filed under meta. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.