I'm beginning to think I'm not as much of a computer geek as I once thought I was.

There was a time not too long ago when society seemed to be telling me that my interest in technology put me in a certain community of geeks, dweebs, Star Wars fans and the like. And I believed it.

But over time, I realized I really wasn't interested in technology for its inherent properties, but rather for what it allowed me to do: download music, do research faster, talk to far-away friends and generally extend my reach beyond my provincial physicality.

Still, people came to me when they needed help with technical support, and it just so happened that because I was fairly early on the technology bandwagon (for my cohort, that is), I was able to provide that help.

But part of me never really enjoyed getting down and dirty with computer code and hardware configuration. Sure, like all things, it's great in small doses, but it wasn't really something that I wanted to do for a career. I felt, though, that I was being pushed in that path.

Broadly speaking, people in the computer field were initially considered either brilliant or anti-social, or both. Perhaps there was some element of truth in that stereotype.

Computing in the '60s and '70s seems to me to have been dry, almost strictly mathematical work done in isolation from the world. Hardware was expensive, and those who had access to it were certainly a unique breed. Little thought was given to the end-user or his experiences, further widening the divide between the computer geeks and everybody else.

Computers were too hard to use and many people were intimidated. Even if they weren't, there weren't too many things to do with a computer at the time.

A few major trends in the '80s and early '90s led to a change in the way computers were viewed.

First, prices dropped. When the Apple Macintosh was first released in 1984, the tag price was $2,495 -- hardly unreasonable. Beginning with the Macintosh, computers started to become easier to use (this is not pro-Apple bias but a nearly universally accepted truth), primarily due to its having the first consumer-priced graphical user interface, something that many take for granted today.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, the Internet began to grow in popularity, giving many "common" people a compelling reason to buy their own computers. The World Wide Web (which is actually just a component of the larger Internet) was invented in 1989, and once the Netscape Navigator Web browser was made available in 1994, the floodgates opened wide.

I'll spare you a recap of the dot-com years, because it will embarrass me and probably bore you. But computer geeks during this time were like gods, and many made enough money to build little shrines to themselves. What a difference 25 years can make -- hackers finally had their day in the sun (although most spend the majority of the day in the basement of some building, hunched over a keyboard, which can be very dark).

Since that time, the tech industry has been beaten up but is now beginning to heat up.

Something amazing has happened, though: We (college students, at least) have all become computer geeks. There's probably no one at Penn State who can't at least fire up a Web browser and check the news at CNN.com. We all have, at minimum, a few basic troubleshooting techniques up our sleeves (simply restarting the computer being the primary one, of course), and we probably get more e-mails than we do snail mail.

Of course there are still geekier computer geeks. In fact, there must be, for they are the ones who are always figuring out what the coolest technologies are; the toys being built by geeks today will become our necessities by 2020. It seems that today many people at least have an understanding of some of the potential benefits of technology, and most people are at least willing to give our friendly geeks and dweebs the benefit of the doubt.