WHAT is cool? Internet encyclopaedia Wikipedia says it's an aesthetic of attitude, behaviour, comportment, appearance and style. Wikipedia is cool. Are you cool? It's a question that keeps some people awake at night. But, then again, those people are deeply uncool. Why? Because, that's why. You can't define it. That's why it's cool, see.

The media thrives upon cool. They coin it. They channel it. They desperately want to own it. The point of publications like this one, after all, is to let you know exactly What's What. And, just as importantly, What's Not. Cool is a maddeningly elusive property, after all.

It can be fabricated and manipulated (just ask the advertising industry) but cool remains the most unpredictable and intangible of properties.

Sure, most people insist they don't give a monkey's - but, deep down, they're usually the ones who care more than anybody. These are superficial times. To be concerned with matters of cool used to be the territory of the young. But these days we've all got a bit of cash to flash and, well, it appears that almost everyone's trying to play it ever so cool.

But then here's the thing. Just in case you hadn't noticed, the coolest thing you can do these days is be uncool. The less cool, in fact, the better. The tide's been turning for years. And when the history books are written, and the box sets compiled, the noughties might just turn out to be Decade of the Geek.

THE GEEK SHALL INHERIT THE EARTH In these uncertain times, so many established truths have been turned on their heads. Once upon a time, the preferred model for social interaction was the outgoing sort - these days, you can have thousands of mates on MySpace without ever leaving your bedroom. Not that we'd recommend it.

The rise of the Nu-Geek has been fuelled by the constant leaps and bounds being made in accessible, affordable, cutting-edge technology. We're all techies these days. All of a sudden, everybody is downloading and uploading and podcasting and YouTubing and MySpacing and Skyping and Flickring and whatnot. You can read more about it on our blog.

Computer games aren't the domain of the trigger-happy teen or intense stoner clique any more; the games console holds pride of place at the centre of any self-respecting home entertainment system. We've all learned to embrace our inner geeks; the sportos, the motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, waistoids, dweebies, dickheads? And yes, that's from Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Movie referencing is incredibly geeky. And everyone's doing it. Which is kind of the point.

We aren't afraid to flaunt our inner dork any more.

What's more, we'll deliberately play the geek card. It's a global phenomenon. The New York edition of Time Out magazine recently coined it as "avant-nerdism": a new sensibility, an updated hip-to-be-square attitude - even a new rumbling of the collective consciousness.

CUTTING-EDGE GEEKDOM Before we go any further, one pertinent question should be addressed: what, exactly, is the difference between a geek and a nerd? It's a question that has kept many of us awake at night. Well, to be honest we were up anyway, watching The Mighty Boosh. And playing The Warriors on PS2. We love The Warriors.

Let's not split hairs about this one; both persuasions are reconcilable but far from interchangeable. A key difference: geeks, by their very nature, are selfdefined. If you have a particular, possibly illogical, nigh upon pathological enthusiasm for a specific aspect of popular culture (Blake's 7, A Bathing Ape clothing, the writings of Jim Dodge, anything involving Miriam O'Callaghan, Charlton Athletic), you are a geek. You can be a sports geek.

You can be a food geek. A Simpsons geek.

Or even a fashion geek.

Say it loud - you're a geek and you're proud!

A nerd, on the other hand, is often categorised as a more esoteric, aloof creature; the Webster dictionary definition is an "unstylish, unattractive, or socially inept person; especially: one slavishly devoted to intellectual or academic pursuits." We take exception to that.

The first known usage of the word "nerd" can be found in Theodor 'Dr Suess' Geisel's classic children's book I If Ran The Zoo ("a Nerkle, a Nerd, and a Seersucker too").

Sometimes you might feel like a total geek. And other times a bit nerdy. That's OK. It's all good. Where, then, does one stand on the whole dork issue? Please - don't complicate matters unnecessarily.

In the interest of full disclosure, it might be time to out myself: I am a bona fide, 20-carat, card-carrying geek. With serious nerd tendencies. And proud of it. My friends are geeks, too. Quelle surprise. When we hang out together, we constitute a full-on nerd herd. My significant other fancies geeks. Thank jaysus. Otherwise she wouldn't be my significant other. My children possess the geek gene. Now we all watch Doctor Who together. Because there's nothing cooler than Doctor Who. Chicks dig geeks. And dudes dig geeky chicks.

Together, we can create a whole new generation of beautiful nerdy kids. Wearing big thick glasses.

Think about it for a minute - the cutting-edge of today's culture is defined by geekdom. The coolest name in music these days? Trust us, it ain't Pete Doherty. Messed-up junkie car crashes stopped being cool around the time Kurt Cobain took a shotgun to his noggin. And it certainly isn't poor old Liam Gallagher. Try Sufjan Stevens, the Christian singer-songwriter who is devoting his career to releasing a series of concept albums devoted to US states. The first two in the series, Michigan and Illinois, have been widely acclaimed as works of near-total genius. He recently released a fiveCD box set of Christmas songs. Guess what? It's superb.

A little too esoteric for your tastes? What about Outkast's Andre 3000, the coolest cat in rap today and the man responsible for the ongoing craze for ghetto-preppie chic - taken to a whole new level by self-proclaimed musical messiah Kanye West.

Then there's Pharrell Williams, half of The Neptunes and the producer behind most of the finest pop records of recent years - he didn't call his band N*E*R*D by accident. Or THE musical sensation of 2006, the nigh-upon-ubiquitous Gnarls Barkley, who will only be photographed as their favourite cult-movie characters; to date, they've posed as everyone from Napoleon Dynamite to Donnie Darko's Frank The Bunny.

Even Nu-Geek God Jarvis Cocker returned to claim his throne last year. And they really don't come cooler (or geekier) than Jarv.

QUENTIN TARANTINO, HE'S OUR HERO Then there are movies. The DVD format has turned us all into critics, completists and connoisseurs, with its widescreen editions and director's cuts and filmmakers' commentaries. That said, who listens to filmmakers' commentaries?

Oscar-winning filmmaker Quentin Tarantino, a totem for every gawky yoke who dreamed of being adored, legitimised the lives of video-shop clerks everywhere.

After the phenomenal one-two punch that was Pulp Fiction, Tarantino could have done whatever he wanted. . .

and he did. He directed episodes of his favourite TV shows, ER and CSI, and he made Kill Bill, the epic martial-arts extravaganza that the teenage QT probably fantasised about.

His new movie, Grindhouse, is a movie-geek's wet dream - a double bill of exploitation flicks directed in tandem with fellow neo-pop auteur Robert Rodriguez.

Rodriguez made Sin City, based on Frank Miller's classic comic-book series. We could go into the whole 'comic books are deeply cool' discussion, but let's not digress.

Let's talk about Kiwi maniac Peter Jackson, who turned one of the great works of geek literature - that would be the Lord Of The Rings trilogy - into the greatest movie trilogy of all times.

And screw you, George Lucas. The geek hordes won't be forgiving you for The Phantom Menace for at least another decade, after which a small yet utterly devoted cult will declare it a work of total and utter genius.

These people will be totally delusional, of course, but that doesn't matter. Being a geek is about passion, illogical or otherwise, and that's the coolest thing about it. The complete lack of concern about appearing cool in the first place. It's the ultimate fashion risk. Take the leap.

We could go on, and on, and on? Pick up Geek magazine, launched in the US last Christmas (featuring choice geekazoid Rann Wilson, from the American version of The Office, on the cover). Drop in the fact that at least three of 2007's most eagerly anticipated albums - from The Arcade Fire, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and LCD Soundsystem - cite '80s geekmeisters Talking Heads as their key influence. Enthuse about the merits of literary geeks like Nick Hornby, Zadie Smith and Roddy Doyle - who all appear to have fallen in with the McSweeney's crowd, American literature's foremost book nerds.

Or discuss the phenomenon of serialised TV spectaculars like Lost, 24 and Desperate Housewives. Or how the new version of Battlestar Galactica is a searing indictment of Gulf War politics. Or explore the strange, beautiful and vaguely terrifying world of MMORPG - massively multiplayer online role-playing games - which involve up to 15 million people across the globe. Some of them are even female.

Each and every aspect of nu-geek culture is a phenomenon unto itself, dovetailing into a genuinely fascinating time for the culture; it's the same principle put across in Wired editor Chris Anderson's fascinating book The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More. All in, it begins to resemble something like a quiet revolution.

Slapstick philosopher Groucho Marx said it best, after all: "I don't want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member."

A nerd motto if ever there was one. The days of cultural globalism are well and truly over. Everything's niche these days, babe.

The alternative is the mainstream. There is no line left to be towed. No box to fit in. Be who you want to be. And geek out to your heart's content. How cool is that?

NU-GEEK ICONS - A GUIDE TO THE GEEK ELITE

Bill Gates AKA Mr Microsoft. The richest man on the planet.

Once portrayed in a biopic by geek poster child Anthony Michael Hall (AKA The Brain from The Breakfast Club). At one point, Bill regularly received up to four million emails a day.

Most of it spam. There's karma for you right there.

Napoleon Dynamite Gosh! The foremost NuGeek fashion icon/poet/ philosopher. The whole Napoleon Dynamite thing should be soooooo over by now, but then you watch the movie again, and again, and? You get the idea.

And Napoleon himself, aka Jon Heder, is geek perfection.

Ryan Tubridy Here's a little theory we'd like to posit; self-professed young old-man Tubbers is so resolutely, inexorably, irrefutably square, he's actually kind of cool. No, wait, he's the King Of Cool. No wait, he isn't. Forget we mentioned it.

David Tennant from 'Doctor Who' The coolest man on the box, no question, despite displaying the occasional tendency to act like a really annoying table-quiz know-it-all. He's the best-dressed Doctor Who since Tom Baker. And he's Scottish, which always helps.

Beth from 'The Gossip' How we cheered when wanton individualists and outspoken full-figured lesbian indie queen Beth Ditto scored the top spot in the NME's Cool List for 2006. How we booed when the NME wouldn't then put her on the cover. The NME is so over.

John Locke from 'Lost' He's, like, totally deep.

Ugly Betty (right ) Ooh, Betty! The season's geek du jour. The secret behind Ugly Betty's meteoric rise to the annals of Geekdom lies with leading lady America Ferrara, who transforms a pretty standard sitcom (some wag dubbed it The Devil Wears Sex And The Betty, which just about sums it up) into must-see TV; the delightful Miss Ferrara's spirited, sympathetic and always game performance more than compensates for the fact that she's, well, not really ugly at all. Geek Goddess!