10 Geeky Things to Be Thankful For

(By: Wired.com)

1. As I wrote last week (see #10 on that list), the geeks have officially won! If our triumph over the forces of jockdom doesn’t deserve at least a nice toast, I don’t know what does.

2. There will be a sequel to Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog! That should be plenty to take the sting out of Dollhouse’s cancellation for Joss Whedon fans, and is certainly good news for everyone who enjoyed the first one, which seems to include most geeks.

3. This is the golden age of webcomics. From xkcd to Penny Arcade to Dork Tower to SMBC to Sluggy Freelance to Toothpaste for Dinner, and many others, webcomics have truly come into their own in the past several years. Geeky humor for free, nothing to recycle and no chance of accidentally reading Cathy: What could be bad?

4. Google Wave. No, we’re not really sure what to use it for, either, but it’s from Google and it’s invitation-only, so it must be awesome. Right?

5. We live in an age where 1-terabyte hard drives are small, inexpensive and easy to come by.For those of us who remember having a PC at home that had no hard drive whatsoever, and who remember when a 40-megabyte hard drive was the size of a cube fridge, we really are living in the future.

6. Widely available broadband Internet connectivity. The next time you go to a Flash-heavy website like YouTube or Hulu, or a photo-sharing website like Flickr, consider how long you’d be waiting for pages to reload if you were on a 2,400-baud modem. Or even a 14,400-baud modem, which I remember being so glad to get because it seemed so fast to me, then. These days we can get bandwidth in our homes or our local coffee shop that laughs in the face of a 14,400 modem … or would, if bandwidth could laugh. And if modems had faces.

Stargate Universe cast photo copyright © Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc.

7. There will not be a new Star Wars trilogy or 3-D versions of the existing movies. It may seem odd to be thankful for something that’s not happening, but the rumors about these gave us nightmares, so we think it makes sense.

8. There is genuinely good science fiction to be found on television. Stargate Universe, while not uniformly great, is only eight episodes old and yet has already had more legitimately good sci-fi stories than Star Trek: Enterprise had in its entire 98-episode run. And then there’s the new version of V, and the upcoming Caprica — yes, even once Dollhouse’s run ends, there will still be better sci-fi on TV than there usually is.

9. A two-part movie adaptation of The Hobbit is being made by Guillermo del Toro and Peter Jackson. We are a bit less than thankful that we have to wait two years to see the first film and three to see the second, but we’d rather have them done right than done quickly. The team that’s making them gives us great confidence that the adaptation will be well worth watching.

10. Children who love to read. There are truly few things that are more gratifying to a geek parent than having kids who will choose to read a book over watching TV. It’s one of those “I really am a good daddy/mommy!” moments.

So, what geeky things are you thankful for this year? Please let us know in a comment. And, Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!