If today's term "geek" refers to what was called a nerd decades ago, then I am that. Geek as a term was not in vogue yet, but there was some consistency to us math types.
Of course, there is much more to being a geek than the term, it's just a quick identifier which gives someone who does not know me a general picture more accurately than any other single term. It's only after one knows me that they can see differences from me and what popular culture describes as a geek.
Without meeting me, I bet most can guess that I am more likely to read something by Sagan at Borders than be looking at gun books or Cosmo. It would probably be easy to guess what part of the SAT I did better on. Did I do better in law school dealing with the differences between murder 1 and murder 2 in criminal law class, or studying quantitative analysis and how it related to spending habits? Do I find Mythbusters more interesting than Dr. Phil? Do I pay more attention to a new Mac's color scheme and how it will match my room or what the stats are regarding what is on the inside? Do I see somebody hitting .400 consistently in baseball more interesting than knowing that the strongest player on the team can lift 400 pounds? Do I find Archimedes more interesting than a Greek tragedy? On about 9 out of ten questions such as these, I pretty much fit what most people would stereotype a geek as. Sure there are tons of guys out there who are math geeks, sports geeks, and fashion geeks, but there is a reason that the term geek would more likely be attached to the guy who likes math.
One word descriptions started pigeonholing us in junior high and high school with terms such as popular, geek, jock, and stoner. While they are just one word terms, less likely descriptive terms in one's youth would be that child being primarily described as a horseman, coin collector, complacent, inquisitive, or Godly.
It certainly was horrifying being identified as a nerd (later replaced by the term geek) in the 70s and 80s, but much greater appreciation and awareness of a geek and what geeks have done for our society has made the label easier to deal with.
