Q&A: Silicon Valley cast and crew on the evolution of the nerd
Hit HBO series' writer Alec Berg thinks people now see nerds as OK if they look like future billionaires, not as figures of merciless fun, writes Teresa Bergen
Nerds are the stars of Silicon Valley, the HBO series about the technology industry in California. Creator Mike Judge, writer Alec Berg and actor Thomas Middleditch talk about the tech culture as the third season of the show begins.
Berg: "There's something about the personality of the engineer that pervades the tech business. Engineers are much better at things than people. If you're seven, eight, nine years old and developing an interest in computer programming, it's probably because you're not playing sports, you're not the greatest social person. You gravitate to objects or things."
Judge: "You see it affect the social world of high schools. I have daughters who are 24 and 21. I think for people their age, it's like, 'Don't pick on that kid, he might be richer than all of us, the next Zuckerberg or something like that.'"
Berg: "The difference is that 10 or 20 years ago, we were making movies about the wealthy captains of industry and they were all wearing suits and worked in banking. If you look at all the newly minted billionaires of the past 10 years, the vast majority of them are in the internet space. I think that the word 'nerd' has come to mean something different in the last 20 years. If you told somebody you could be a nerd and that would make you a billion dollars, I think a lot of people would sign up."
If you told somebody you could be a nerd and that would make you a billion dollars, I think a lot of people would sign up