Where are all the geeks? I recently attended one state’s well-publicized “high tech” events. Not a single unkempt microserf in sight. Lawyers and suits galore, but no untucked, bespectacled, brilliant digi-geeks.

If geeks HAD shown up, they would’ve felt awkwardly outcast. Most people treat geeks like alien life forms. This is a big problem. The undisputed economic engines in this country are knowledge workers. Geeks are their patron saints. But rather than laud or listen to them, we smirk at their style and poke fun at their fantasy. Thank goddess for TechTV where geek is chic.

The way we treat geeks must change. In Managing in the Next Society Peter Drucker explains England’s big, fat 19th century boo-boo: building their finest engineering schools in India. Ye olde Brits felt strongly that anyone not a lawyer or banker was second class. So England built their “second class” engineering schools off-shore. Today India’s engineers rule. Britain is still hungover.

Will the US make the same mistake? If we don’t grant knowledge workers a just place in society, we send a message that they’re unimportant. It’s high time that we start treating Geeks with the social respect they deserve. Drucker asserts that if we don’t, we’ll be sorry.

“The key to maintaining leadership in the economy is likely to be the social position of knowledge professionals and social acceptance of their values. For them to remain traditional “employees”: and be treated as such would be tantamount to England treating its technologists as tradesmen.” – Peter Drucker, Managing in the Next Society.