December 28, 2005
“it’s the tech savvy who influence everyone else in our society”
A very salient point from Steve Rubel:
A quick glance at Boing Boing’s December site stats reveals that more of their visitors now use Firefox than any other web browser, including Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. As much as I love Firefox, its fan base is still dominated by geeks. Does this mean blogs aren’t important? Hardly. It’s the tech savvy who influence everyone else in our society.
I agree with the last sentence wholeheartedly. I also believe these people’s influence is growing at the expense of the “media savvy” e.g. TV folk, filmmakers, novelists, screenwriters, journalists, actors, painters, advertising agents…
…and cartoonists.
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8 Responses to ““it’s the tech savvy who influence everyone else in our society””
Gaping Link
“It’s the tech savvy who influence everyone else in our society.” That’s Steve Rubel, approving quoted by Hugh MacLeod. I don’t agree with Steve as wholehearedly as Hugh seems to, but discussion of the issue is worthwhile. Are the “tech savvy” the “lea…
“I also believe these people’s influence is growing at the expense of the ‘media savvy’”
But not at the expense of the tech savvy media savants. More likely to their benefit.
I’m curious about just who you mean by “media savvy.” Or rather, how much emphasis are you putting on the word “savvy?”
I think I have a guess.
Using myself as an example, I’m a cartoonist and a graphic designer working for an independent free weekly paper with a growing web presence. Mostly, I’m a webcomic author. I’ve been doing it for five years, and my comic currently brings me $10 a week.
Clearly, I’m not savvy, so maybe I don’t even fit in that equation…
yes but they forgot about KEEPING the geeks IN their fan base
now people, let’s tell these folks at Mozilla to bring back this pdf-compatible thing as it used to be…
ooh.. that’d be nice, yes… Thank you, Fred!
Don’t agree. The tech savy have the most influence on our society when talking about gadgets and gizmos, or communicating with the tech savy online.
Just look at your stormhoek promotion, it’s great for targeting the tech savy and they in turn will have a knock on effect on their peers when they talk about it.
However the people with the most influence in society are people who are passionate about what they’re talking about. Unless of course you think that Mother Teresa would have solved world poverty if she had a blog that is
Firefox certainly seems to represent technology that’s crossing the chasm to the mainstream. Since it’s just another browser and easy to install, the bar to rolling out to non-techie people is fairly low.
Powerful Influence
How much is society influenced by things that are created by people using stuff that is the domain — at least initially — of the tech savvy? Remember pictures before Photoshop? Effects movies before the Inferno (Godzilla marathon, anyone)?