Morons, but just for a minute, this week's installment of Disenchanted. We're all susceptible to localized ignorance, especially as global
knowledge is a smaller and smaller chunk of what we know.
Computer people especially so, since it tends to challenge vulnerable value systems: the world thinks it strange if I spend 90% of my waking time playing with electrical patterns, yet (perhaps even so
) I choose to anyway. I can't afford to have wrongly invested so much time, energy, and livelihood in this strange, local area of knowledge. Anyone not in the same priesthood is an challenge to my value system, which is a glossy way to say, an affront to my procreative worth.
As computing becomes more common, it's more acceptable to spend 90% of one's time shifting bits--but this mindset doesn't go away. Maybe it's just because it's the society I know, but this higher value on local knowledge is greater with computer people than other fields. Possibly this's because it's perfectly all right to be a chef or a botanist, but there is (or used to be) a social stigma to being a computer expert.
