Nerdism: Transhuman

J.D. Hancock - Austin vs Gadget

This is a fairly recent term that's gained common use...among nerds and geeks, but it's slowly creeping into the vernacular of non-nerds. 

Not long ago you would have heard metahuman, and before that superhuman. Each word has a very similar connotation, although the specifics vary slightly. 

All three words are typically used in reference to comic book or movie superheroes, like The Flash, Elasta-Girl, Spiderman, or Buffy the Vampire Slayer who have powers or abilities, however transhuman encompasses any human who has, through evolution or augmentation, acquired capabilities beyond normal humans. This could be mythological heroes like Fionn mac Cumhaill, fictional future humans like Beatrice Prior, or even real-life people who change so much that they can no longer be regarded as merely human. (Superman and Doctor Who don't qualify because they're not human.) 

The word transhuman has become more popular recently because of technological advances that bring us closer to the possibility of extending our lifespan and expanding our physical abilities through cybernetics, genetics, nanotech and a host of other technologies that make a lot of super powers seem like a feasible concept.

Nerd Q&A: What's up with Nerds and Inhalers?

Retinafunk - Inhaler Street Art

Here's an astute question.
Why are nerds in movies and on TV always carrying around inhalers?

I never paid attention to this trope, even though I consider myself a nerd but never had an inhaler, and few of the nerds I've known in life had inhalers either. Based on my personal experience the inhaler=nerd stereotype isn't true, but it still strikes me as believable. Here's why:

Nerdism: Frak!

This all-purpose euphemism hails from the Sci-Fi Channel's reboot of Glen Larson's Battlestar Galactica. Sci-Fi replaced the original show's 1970's disco-tastic trappings with alcoholism, violence, sex, and a multitude of identity crises.

Don't confuse frak with frack. The latter has become a common diminutive reference to hydraulic fracturing, but Battlestar's frak (without the "c") predates the common use of frack by a few years.

Frak is like the Swiss army knife of euphemisms. It can be used as a verb, noun, adjective, or interjection and replaces the equally versatile yet less welcome “f-word” that teachers don't want you to use in class.

Nerd Q&A: How Do I Get a Nerd To Go Out With Me?

Pierre Willemin - Nerd Power

Here's a question I would like to see more often.

I'm a very outgoing woman but I'm attracted to a shy, awkward nerd: how do I get him to go out with me...and maybe take things further?

You may have noticed this already: the majority of nerds are, as you put it, shy and awkward. A lot of nerds don't realize they're attractive, or they're simply insecure, which means they misinterpret signals that other people easily pick up, so they don't typically make the first move.

Nerdism: Meatspace

Sergey Galyonkin - Orlovsky & Occulus Rift

Meatspace -- Refers to real-life, as opposed to the virtual world including social networks, gaming, chat and streaming video.

Meatspace is a fun word that plays on the growing irony of how we have to define our realities. The term originates in science fiction (particularly cyberpunk) as the antonym of cyberspace. We don't use the word cyberspace much anymore, but nerds still like to toy with accepted convention by bending terminology to our whims. Until this century, virtual reality was a science fiction concept, and the most advanced examples of it were clunky toys that no one took seriously. 20th century humans didn't have to preface a meeting with non-virtual, but 21st century people spend a significant amount of time immersed in some sort of digital facsimile of life.

This nerdism hasn't broken into the mainstream yet, but it's more and more applicable every year as people regularly use online services for making friends, chatting, gaming, dating and nearly any other interaction that used to happen only when two people were within touching distance of each other. We're already at a point where it is sometimes necessary to clarify if something happened online or in meatspace, and it's likely we'll soon have to specify that our friends join us at the Starbucks in meatspace, rather than using their smartphone or Oculus Rift.