But the most striking aspect of this new culture was its immediacy. Technology is simply more relevant than footnotes. There are other reasons why technology has seized control of the culture. These questions, of course, are the same ones that natural philosophers and scientists of the first two cultures have been asking for centuries. Despite the cartoon rendition I've just sketched, the nerd way is a third way of doing science.
Classical science is a conversation between theory and experiment.
Technological novelties such as computer models are neither here nor there. A few years ago when Tom Ray, a biologist turned nerd, created a digital habitat in a small computer and then loosed simple digital organisms in it to procreate, mutate, and evolve, he was no longer merely modeling evolution or collecting data. Instead, Ray had created a wholly new and novel example of real evolution. That's nerd science. As models and networked simulations take on further complexity and presence, their spect it deserves.