Revenge of the Blerds: How Black Nerds Will Lead Us into the Future
Remember those kids who would run down the halls with their arms extended behind them and do weird things with their hands that sort of looked like gang signs, but not really? What about the cosplay chicks who loved anime and planned their social calendar around events that end in “Con”? Surely, by now we’ve all met that one friend that swears that cryptocurrencies are still the way of the future and that the Metaverse is still a thing.
If you have, then congratulations! You’ve met a nerd. If they were Black, then even better. You’ve met a rare jewel that must be protected at all cost. You met a Blerd. And these Blerds are going to help lead us into the future.
Blerds have always had a unique place in our culture and society. Historically, they never really squarely fit into one group. They were at times understood as the socially awkward bunch, but to some people’s surprise they were also the captain of your high school football team, or your class president, and if you keep digging, you’ll find out that it could be you, too. These are the kids who had imagination, often had a knack for science and/or technology, and fell in love with fantasy and the many worlds it could take them.
There’s no shortage of Blerds—not now, or ever. But, those kids you remember growing up are now emerging as captains of industry and are leading the way into the future. These folks never gave up on their dreams and refused to be deterred by what others deemed as “cool”. They made their own “cool” and built a level of resilience against public opinion. This artisanal blend of soft skills and subject matter expertise against the backdrop of our current technological boom make them among the best candidates for helping us understand the uncharted territory we’re entering, and as conversation leaders on how we can leverage these new tools for our personal and communal benefit.
Dedren Snead is one such rising leader in the tech space. A self-declared lover of all things tech, anime, and sci fi, Dedren is the founder, owner, and CEO of Subsume Studios, a company dedicated to building Black Futures by honoring creativity and culture through gaming, comics, animation, tech & more. Stationed in Atlanta’s Russell Innovation Center for Entrepreneurs (RICE), Dedren teaches a class to existing and aspiring Black entrepreneurs called “Metaverse for Black Business”. In it, he introduces Black founders to the metaverse, Web3, and artificial intelligence (AI). Beyond introducing them to these concepts and platforms, he helps his students think through how they can best leverage these tools to refine and improve their businesses, while also helping to shape these same tools to understand and appreciate Black people, our culture, and businesses on our own terms.
These type of initiatives and the Afrofuturistic (Black history, culture and putting it in fantastic spaces) lens through which he sees possible futures is what makes Dedren and his peers some of the best visionaries for a new type of future, and they’re inviting us to dream and build it alongside them as a community, celebrating all of the infinitely many things that make us as a people unique and diverse. This is how we begin to lead the narrative on what it means to be Black in the 21st century.
Afrofuturist tech creators see a future in which AI is a core part of our lives and the narrative of that shared tech-centered future is actively being written right now. “There’s a rapid change in how we do business, connect with each other, and how digital spaces see Blackness or the lack thereof,” Dedrean said. “We’re turning things over to AI but we’re not properly represented. The only way to do that is to change the dataset and the new narrative. We have to break down the misconceptions and misunderstandings of what Web3 is and isn’t.”
Dedren showcasing Subsume at Comic Con
With existing challenges that African Americans traditionally face when launching and growing a business, AI technology presents a new hope for evening the playing field. “Whether you’re just starting out or a Fortune 500, you must ask where do you find yourself in this Web3 climate,” he says. He continued, “The idea isn’t to just get rich, but it’s to discover how can you, as a Black business, be included in the data sets for tomorrow where you’re both appreciated and have a sense of agency.”
Ultimately, the future is unknown, but that doesn’t mean we have to be unprepared. Let’s take a page out of the Blerd’s playbook and continue to dream beautiful dreams, and build fantastic futures. We have access to the “know how” and are becoming familiar with the tools. So let’s build something beautiful for us, by us, and take our place in a more just and equitable world.
Listen to the Blerds — the new cool kids — and May the Fourth be with you.