On the Shoulders of Geeks

I was waiting in the school yard for my daughter last year when I asked a friend and fellow father what he was working on. He told me in confidence that he was ghost writing a book. I asked who he was writing for, knowing that a ghost writer never tells until years later when he bitterly takes rightful credit at every dinner party. Still I was able to put some clues together. To my horror he was writing a book for an intelligent acquaintance of mine. Why this was a surprise showed a certain naiveté on my part. Since then I have learned that nonfiction books appearing on the New York Times best seller list are 70% or so written by ghost writers. It is not surprising that Sarah Palin had a ghost writer, but my brilliant acquaintance? That was a shock.  It wasn’t until I really thought deeply about this situation that I gave up condemning the academic, and instead looking in the mirror and wondering how much metaphorical ghost writing I have had done.

I must say, none of these words in my blogs, or books are written by anyone else. (I know it may be obvious. Who would have a ghost writer write a free blog that is this scattered in content and style or write academic or poetry books, neither of which gross the author much more than $10.) I remember well when Christopher Hitchens dragged himself out of bed, feeling week and sick from cancer and chemo to write 1000+ publishable words a day. To me that was an example of a true professional. Until I started thinking a little more compassionately Hitch made the ghost writing of books of professors or businessmen seem inexcusable. My sympathy for the credit hoarding intellectual came from the realization that as a technologist and CEO of a small company I often use the tech equivalent of ghost writers. That is, I don’t write much code myself anymore, or engineer many products. Instead I raise money and seek customers by taking a lot of the credit for the ideas, which were, like the academics who hired the ghost writer, at least to a valid extent mine in the first place. I don’t really love this. I like coding and making things. I write about how important it is to do so, but it is also important to delegate to others who do these things better than me, and have the time to devote to them. I call this world a geekaucracy. That is, like any bureaucracy, it is a structure that has a level of people who do more delegating and structuring than operating. In this case the operating is the profession of being a geek. A geek to me is not just a programmer, ut can involve a community of people within a group or company that make technology happen by actually doing the technology themselves.

I am a geek who has become a Geekaucrat. Is this excusable? Maybe it is, as it is necessary in order for the company to flourish. Is it the same as the intellectual with a ghost writer? Well, maybe, but I am not willing to go that far. While my name is associated with the company I don’t take away from others by leaving their names off, or their contributions unrecognized. On the other hand it is a cautionary tale for me, and also one that deserves some self-reflection. Can I or anyone remain a geek while running a geekaucracy?