Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Long scorned by kids, especially teenagers, the nerd dad is now the hero.

This story brought an idea back to mind. I had this idea first a couple of years ago, but didn’t blog about it. The time has come.

The story linked above from  The Telegraph bemoans that many parents don’t understand the electronic devices their kids use. This situation occurred first a few years ago with devices and teenagers. They had iPods and iPhones and mp3 players and cameras and parents couldn’t understand them.

Most parents couldn’t understand all these digital devices. Engineers, however, could understand them. Yes, the nerd dads (and a few moms, but mostly dads), those guys who didn’t coach basketball or soccer or anything else because they were, well, nerds, those guys understood digital stuff.

“Sure,” one would say, “that’s basically an Unix system. We just get into the terminal and see if it is Bourne or Bash or maybe even C-shell and then we ftp files across and then you…”

Teenagers were impressed. Their dad could hack their iPod and move songs to computers that no one else could. Free songs, free movement, great fun. Those formerly “cool” dads who wore shorts to soccer games to show off their muscles were all thumbs and didn’t understand how to circumvent the rules.

Well, time moves on and so does technology. Now, it isn’t just the teens who have bewildering technology. Pre-schoolers have the tech. Their gamer, computer science, nerd dads (and some moms) understand the kernal of the OS and how to move apps and songs and videos and all that.

“Don’t worry, son,” proclaims the nerd engineer parent, “This is using the old version of cp and that has a hole in it here so that we can do it all in one command. Just a minute…”