Geek As Citizen: History, Posterity, and Our Terrible Past Creations

Previously I had focused on the value of publishing and republishing our past works (mostly focusing on the written word), and on helping others publish their works. I consider this an excellent example of geek citizenship as we organize information that others may find of use, review past work, and assist and empower others. If you’ve done any kind of writing over the years you know it’s power to reach people – to organize it’s access and help others do the same just lets more people benefit from someone’s creations.

However in my past work I was referring to things that would actually benefit people directly. Things we would be proud of and share gladly. Things that in short, we consider good works, even if they may be a bit rough around the edges.

The problem comes when dealing with things we’ve created that aren’t that good – or downright terrible.

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Geek Job Guru: Skill Spread

What lets you do your job and carry out your career? Well you could say your position, connections, etc. But I’m talking actual productivity, and what lets you actually do things is skills.

When it comes to skills, that’s a huge part of our career. We measure them with tests. We get certifications to show we have them. We get rated on the job or by clients. We seek them out or develop them. In short, a big part of your career is the ability to do something.

So more skills is good for you because it’s good for your career. Ehancing skills is good for you because skills are good.  And so on.

Now we geeks in many ways are people with multiple careers. Sure we have what pays the bills, we also have our hobbies, and many of us have something in between. Your average highly active geek-type is probably doing two or three jobs at any time, and in many cases only one of them actually pays the bills.  Sadly for some that’s “barely” pays the bills, so enhancing what we can do is even more important.

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What Has Marvel Got To Lose?

[This article was originally published at Comics Bulletin.]

So having seen Thor 2: Return of Loki and some other guy with blond hair, it’s obvious (and as in being discussed all over the internet) that Marvel is going large. Huge. Enormous.

This all sounds like it may lead to a rather “rocky” crossover with a real gem of an idea that could get you stoned if you did it wrong. Wow, that metaphor got out of hand.

So what is Marvel doing having, as it were, thrown down the gauntlet?

Infinity_Gauntlet

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