By Their Anoraks Shall Ye Know Them By their anoraks shall ye know them, By their hair and their National Health specs, And their unpleasant smell: with their mothers they dwell, And they certainly never have sex All alone they sit with their computers Or discuss algorithms on-line; They’re strangers to hope, human contact — and soap — But their programming skills are just fine Yet they may be our ultimate line of defence Against governments, crooks and the man: When you simply can’t clean spyware off your machine, There’s a guy in a bedsit who can. So while ‘normal’ folk treat them with caution, And the cool dudes regard them with mirth, You just mark my words — be nice to your nerds — For the geek will inherit the earth (1980s, completed 2011)