PAX East Proves Geeks Should Rule the World

Today, I spent some time browsing through my favorite forums.  There are lots of sites that I frequent for content, but only a few on which I take the time to read the forums because although forums are a wonderful place for interesting discussion they also tend to be a wonderful place for completely useless chatter.  One forum that I've been lurking on a lot lately is PAX East because it's only about a month away and I am ridiculously excited.  Every day there's some new tidbit that makes me jump up and down and nearly spill my coffee. (Wil Wheaton!  Jonathan Coulton!  Yippee!)

First, I found a list of boardgames that will be available for play and was happy to see many of my favorites, though no Star Wars Epic Duels.  I don't care that it's out of print or that it's only for ages 8 and up.  The game is fun people!  I also had a good laugh reading about how first time visitors think they're going to get around in Boston.  Then amid all the fun and happy I found a post that was so annoying and bullheaded it made me want to scream.  A guy I will now call Persistent Geek was being critical of how the folks at PAX run their show.

I know everyone has an opinion and that it's impossible for people to always agree.  Just imagine how boring your average tabletop game would be without rules debates.  "You don't have line of sight."  "Yes, I do."  "Oh, my bad.  Your Space Marines can surely see right around that corner.  Take the shot."  It would be awful.  So it wasn't that Persistent Geek had an unpopular opinion, but that he was so single-minded in his defense of that opinion.  Most everyone disagreed with him and some were none too nice in their rebuttals while others had thoughtful responses to counter his original statements.  Didn't matter.  Through it all Persistent Geek stayed the course, not altering his original statements an iota.  After getting past my initial reaction I suddenly realized that this thread was the key to, well, everything.

Imagine a world run by geeks.  Conference rooms would be full of people wearing The Official Geek Uniform of cool tee shirts while eating fast food and drinking highly caffeinated beverages.  Wars would never happen because there'd be at least one Persistent Geek in the room and he'd never agree on where and when to fire the first shot.  Natural disaster?  No problem.  Get some MacGyver Geeks on that and give them a little duct tape and they'd have the place looking great again in no time.  Big project with limited funds?  Find yourself a Gamer Geek because those guys know how to work every angle and get the best possible deal.  Computer Geeks to optimize the internets.  Scifi Geeks to dream up the next big thing.  Tech Geeks to actually build it.  Think of the possibilities!

Now if we could all just agree on how to get this plan going...aw, forget it.  That'll never happen.