Dec. 30, 2007
Get Me The Geeks!
How Tricky Technology Is Giving Rise To The Geeks
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Play CBS Video Video Get Me The Geeks! The increasingly complicated electronics our society relies on have given rise to the geeks, the essential technicians who set up our gadgets. Steve Kroft reports.
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Section Consumer Electronics Show The hottest tech trends for 2007 are on display in Las Vegas
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Section Eye On Technology Daniel Sieberg's reports on computers and technology for the CBS Evening News.
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- 60 Minutes
This episode of 60 Minutes is available as a free audio podcast. Click here to listen or download.
It’s hard to say exactly when it happened, but sometime during the past ten years, most of us involuntarily surrendered a big chunk of our lives to computers, and to other networking devices that contain computer chips. We’re talking laptops, desk tops, cell phones, BlackBerrys, PDAs, and remote controls -- anything that needs to be programmed, requires technical support, and can crash, die, or merely freeze.
As Steve Kroft reports, that always has a way of happening at the worst possible moment, and for most of us there is only one solution: get me the geeks!
We are becoming slaves to our own technology - addicted to and dependent upon all sorts of beeping, flashing gadgetry that is supposed to make our lives easier.
But it has become so complicated to set up, program and fix, that most of us don’t know how to do it, giving rise to a multi-billion dollar service industry populated by the very people who used to be shunned in the high school cafeteria: geeks, like Robert Stephens.
"It takes time to read the manuals. I'm gonna save you that time cause I stay home on Saturday nights and read them for you," Stephens says, laughing.
"You and the rest of the geeks," Kroft remarks.
"There's millions of us out there across the country," Stephens says.
And 12,000 of them work for Stephens, the founder and chief inspector of "Geek Squad," the tech support company he founded 12 years ago while he was still in college and sold in 2002 to Best Buy.
Whether his geeks are making service calls in their Volkswagen Beetles or toiling over the 4,000 frozen, infected computers that pass through a facility near Louisville every day, they all wear the same uniform - white shirts, white sox and black clip on ties. It’s a look Stephens borrowed from NASA engineers.
"It looks a little weird walking down the street, 'cuz people think we're gonna hand out bibles. But when you see like 20 of us walk into a bar and start you know ordering beers, it looks like an FBI raid," Stephens tells Kroft.
He says the biggest complaint about tech support people is rude, egotistical behavior and the uniform is designed to impart a dose of humility as they work their wizardry.
"I mean, there's usually some frantic civilian at the door pointing at some device in the corner that will not obey," he explains. "And we've gotta make sense of it. And, you know, hygiene provides bonus points if I don't smell bad. I mean, literally, that was my business plan. Just be nice and fix it."
Asked if people are grateful, Stephens says, “Oh, of course. If you look at like the focus groups or whatever, people will say, ‘Savior,’ and, ‘They saved me,’ and, ‘They saved my data.’"
"This stuff's irreplaceable. Your master's thesis that you've been working on for six years that you, that you promised yourself you'll back up next week, we have saved more MBA degrees in this country than anybody," he adds.
Stephens says the company has become indispensable. "Because I don't think that the pace of innovation is going to slow. I don't think people realize the Internet revolution hasn't even really started yet," he explains.
A dozen years ago, when Stephens started the Geek Squad, most people used IBM computers, and primitive Microsoft software; the Internet was still a novelty. Today, thousands of products and providers allow you to watch TV shows, make phone calls, download music, print color photos, and dictate letters without leaving your desktop, if you have the time, the patience, the aptitude, and the available brain cells to master yet another software protocol.
Produced By L. Franklin Devine
© MMVII, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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See all 104 CommentsGo to MicroSoft and get the cd driver, save it to a directory (write down the location) uninstall the old drive, if there is one and install the newly downloaded one. Just choose the right operating system ( XP, Vista, whatever) for the driver you get.
Co a quick look I found all of them at http://www.cdrom-drivers.com/companies/667.htm
Good luck!
Sounds like you don''t have the driver installed. Can Windows "find it" in a search by drive letter?
That site is powered by an army of kees who are happy to assist free of charge, on many products the geeks have no knowledge on.
Check it out www.fixya.com
Secondly, it''s a perfect example of how political correctness is not about treating people decently, it''s about promoting and demoting classes of people arbitrarily. Some offensive words will ruin your career, but others can be used with impunity. ''Geek'' is a perfect example of this.
Years ago, the model of a technology consultant was Arthur Andersen, Peat Marwick or Ernst & Young. It was based on the Big 8- 6- 4 image, conservative, well dressed and polished.
But the media created ''Geek'' image is very self serving, companies are ''letting'' their workers work for free on weekends.
Whereas CBS''s Leslie Stahl once did a story in the early 1990s about the truth of H-1b visas, not her peices just fawn all over India''s ''superior'' ITT in a ''Brand ITT'' that was full of borderline racist lies.
Another term has come into being in the last 10 years, ''Mainsteam media'', and the conotations are NOT ''Edward R Murrow''. More like corporate, politically correct propaganda.
This story being a perfect example.
I am a repair geek. I have seen just as many Macs needing repair, the difference being that because Macs are closed systems, you can only get parts from Apple, and often the cost is just a hundred or so less than buying a new machine, and the wait time for parts is two to six weeks.
Apple''s business model seems to be "pay twice as much for a Mac, if you have problems, trash it, and buy a new one, if you''re not rich enough for us, tough luck, buy a PC"
Which, now that Macs are "Intel inside" anyway, even emulating winblows systems in order to run Micro$oft on a system costing twice as much as a native PC.
20 years worth? That data must exist somewhere else, because there is no way you have been using the same laptop for 20 years, methinks thou dost protest too big.
Even if it was true, you could probably backed it up to a few DVD+DLs (over 9 gb per disk), your failure to do this simple and often advised bit of maintenance is what lost your data, not the repairman.
HDDs crash, dude, they have at best three to five year warranties, as do the electronics, didn''t you RTFM and the warranty card?
over every mistake.
You just keep on trying
till you run out of cake.
And the Science gets done"
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