We start with Cory Doctorow. Cory is most famous among geeks for writing on Boing Boing, one of the most popular blogs. If you don't read Boing Boing, and have no idea what a "blog" is, that’s okay. I’m su’ll find your opportunity to jump on the geek-mobile later. From Cory we connect to Mark Frauenfelder, who also writes on Boing Boing, and is editor of MAKE magazine. In relation to MAKE, Mark was recently on The Colbert Report, so from there we connect to Stephen Colbert. Stephen was previously on The Daily Show, of course. (Are you a geek yet?) Also on The Daily Show: super-geek John Hodgman. You may also know John from his role as "PC" in Apple's recent ads, or maybe from his recent geeky book, Areas of My Expertise. In the audio version of the book, Jonathan Coulton appears. Jonathan writes geeky songs. Yesterday, Jonathan appeared on Ze Frank’s The Show. Ze Frank has a geeky video show.
Thus completes our six degrees of geek: Cory-Mark-Stephen-John-Jonathan-Ze. This is the geek train I ride on. Seeing Jonathan with Ze Frank today was the geek-fest that prompted me to write this. But now that I look at the list, I note that these are six white men of roughly the same age and economic background. And we can easily branch out in other directions of geekiness (e.g. Stephen Colbert vs. The Decemberists) and find more of the same. It’s hard to dismiss as coincidence that I am a geek, and also a white male of roughly the same age and economic background. I’d never heard of any of these people as I was becoming a geek, so how did that happen?
http://www.ecoshock.org/DNgreens.html
I recorded it for CFRO radio in Vancouver - it's a pretty good quality listen.
Alex Smith
Radio Ecoshock
www.ecoshock.org
So to answer your question, there are many 20-30 something geeks from white, middle class families because the peer to peer information exchange happened primarily between their parents. You're less likely to see an industry dominated by a specific demographic again as neighborhoods, schools, and workplaces diversifying and the access to information is driven less by peer to peer in physical spaces and more by online interactions. There is an "old" joke that on the internet, no one knows you're a dog. I think that can be taken a step further that increasingly in geek circles, it doesn't matter if you're a dog, a teenage girl in suburbia, or a 60 year- in guy in Jakarta, your code speaks. The truly scary thing isn't that the industry is dominated buy white geeks from middle class homes today, but that the peer to peer exchange of information that would keep Americans of any race/color in roles as leaders in the technology industry isn't happening. The early days of tinkering with computer kits has given way to a culture of consumption where people accept ridiculous legal rational that the math used to encode audio is somehow owned by a company (DRM), that shapes are patentable (DMCA), or that building your own camera would be illegal (Broadcast Flag). The RIAA and MPAA are conditioning parents to prevent their children from hacking and there aren't enough people of any age, race, or income promoting a different view point to their peers.
These are quintiscentially geeky things to do that don't appear to have a strong connection to the social patterns that create homogeneity in the tech industry. They're like tech geekiness in that they're somewhat outside the norm, but they're unlike tech geekiness in that they won't eventually become the norm. Here are some more non-tech geeks that fit the stereotype: Conan O'Brien, a celebrity geek, Kevin Smith, a movie/comic geek, Beck, a music geek. The first exception that comes to mind is Ana Marie Cox, a political geek.
-- Another mid-30s, middle class, white guy.
Why didn't you know about these guys when you were becoming a geek? That's like asking why all the trees in a forest get wet at the same rate when it rains. You're in the same cohort, that's all. The same rain fell on all of you.
In reply to Kevin I'd say that the practice of hacking will most probably continue regardless of what the RIAA et al have to say. We're monkeys, and monkeys hack, unless you put them in permanent lockdown.