Akademik

(NERD.i.stan)

n.

An upscale and largely self-contained suburb or town with a large population of high-tech workers employed in nearby office parks that are dominated by high-tech industries; any large collection of nerds. Also: Nerdistan.

"Cities need a people climate more than they need a business climate," [Richard] Florida says. They need technology, but they also need talent and tolerance. In his book [The Rise of the Creative Class], he describes three kinds of high-tech communities: the "nerdistans" of the Silicon Valley; "latte towns" like Boulder, "with plentiful outdoor amenities"; and older urban areas whose rebirth is "fueled by a combination of creativity and lifestyle amenities."

— Patricia Calhoun, "A Class Act," Denver Westword, June 19, 2003

South Orange County is a classic nerdistan — largely newly built, almost entirely upscale office parks, connected by a network of toll roads and superhighways to planned, often gated communities inhabited almost entirely by college educated professionals and technicians.

— Joel Kotkin, "Avoiding Excesses Has Buoyed L.A.'s Tech Sector," Los Angeles Business Journal, August 20, 2001

Today's most rapidly expanding economic regions remain those that reflect the values and cultural preferences of the nerdish culture — as epitomized by the technology-dominated, culturally undernourished environs of Silicon Valley. In the coming decade, we are likely to see the continued migration of traditional high-tech firms to new nerdistans in places like Orange County, Calif., north Dallas, Northern Virginia, Raleigh-Durham and around Redmond, Wash., home base for Microsoft.

— Joel Kotkin, "Escape From nerdistan," The Washington Post, September 14, 1997

While discussing drugs with my 11-year-old son the other night, I figured it was time to tell him about altered states of consciousness. No way around it. Through history, I explained, human beings have exhibited a definite desire to step outside what we normally consider to be reality.

Some of the methods of doing this — drugs, alcohol, cultism — are ultimately damaging or lethal. But other ways — prayer, sweat-lodge ceremonies, fishing — are usually beneficial or at least do no harm.

"Give me another example," he said.

Well, computers offer some folks an altered state. (Call it Nerdistan.)

— Richard Louv, "Editorial," The Baltimore Sun, June 29, 1993

This word combines nerd, (which the Encarta dictionary defines, almost positively, as "an enthusiast whose interest is regarded as too technical or scientific and who seems obsessively wrapped up in it") with the suffix -istan, which means "place of" or "home of." Its use as a descriptor of Silicon Valley-like areas was coined by urban analyst and writer Joel Kotkin, who provides the next two citations.

South Orange County is a classic nerdistan — largely newly built, almost entirely upscale office parks, connected by a network of toll roads and superhighways to planned, often gated communities inhabited almost entirely by college educated professionals and technicians.

— Joel Kotkin, "Avoiding Excesses Has Buoyed L.A.'s Tech Sector," Los Angeles Business Journal, August 20, 2001