Dan Abrams on NBC; expands Mediaite with Geekosystem

Dan Abrams (in photo), who at one point had his own show on MSNBC, was on NBC again Friday after a bit of a television hiatus to start the media news website Mediaite. Now, TechCrunch has taken note of Publisher and founder: Dan Abrams's new site called Geekosystem.

This young, black, bald, geek blogger was totally underwhelmed by Geekosystem because it seems to reflect what Geek culture looks like from a young, white, frat boy perspective. (Not that Dan Abrams is such a person). Not the term "Geek" wasn't used to describe that view. Geekosystem, to the extent such a thing really exists - and it does - contains blacks, whites, Asians, Latinos and Latinas, Indians, and a large number of people of color.

The Geekosystem also contains a large number of women that aren't represented in Dan Abrams' version of The Geekosystem.

One woman that Dan Abrams should be aware of is Jane McGonigal at The Institute for The Future, who spends much of her time not only playing games, but making games and studying how people interact within a game structure, which could be anything from a board game to, well, the whole World. Yet, there's nothing about, say, the top 10 female programmers or game developers.

But on that note, Geekosystem's "Top 10 Programmers" does include one woman, indicating the influence of Dan Abrams associate Rachel Sklar, maybe? One can only hope.

In fact, that's the problem. Geekosystem's Editor-At-Large is not Rachel Sklar, but Andrew Cedotal. Nothing against Andrew, but Dan was better off having Rachel fill that role. Of course, the bias here is that Rachel's a friend of this blogger, and this blogger is a contributor to Mediaite, but the overarching issue is the theme, message, and direction of Geekosystem: it's a mess that does not live up to its mission:

The mission of Geekosystem is to unite all the tribes of geekdom under one common banner. There’s a lot of overlap between the different families of geekery: The geeks who are into gadgets and computers are often one and the same as the geeks who are into comics and sci-fi are often just the same as the geeks who are fueling the culture of the Web — one forum or imageboard at a time. As the site’s name suggests, Geekosystem recognizes and celebrates these interconnections and the oft-overlooked personalities that hold it all together.

It's the in the "oft-overlooked personalities" that Dan Abrams new venture fails. More often than not, the "oft-overlooked personalities" are geeks who women and people of color. A token mention does not solve the problem; a total Geekosystem overhaul is necessary.