If small is still the new big, then the biggest book of the moment is "Microtrends: The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow's Big Changes" by Mark Penn, CEO of public-relations powerhouse Burson-Marsteller. Penn divines the future from the niche-ification of the present. For us tech types, one observation rises to the top: As the Internet becomes ever more dominant, geeks are now welcome at the lunch table with the cool kids.Penn's books is essentially a modern take on the popular socio-business prognostications of the late twentieth century, notably Alvin Toffler's Future Shock and John Naisbitt's Megatrends. However, where those tomes trafficked in bombast, Penn sifts the sociological sands to come up with a fine-grained view of where we're headed.

The 70+ microtrends he's identified included the observation that people are continuing to work after retirement (my take: bad), tattoos are going upscale (clean needles are a good thing), and women are increasingly dating men size years or more younger than them (no comment).

For me (and for you, dear reader) Penn's most salient observations arise in his chapter "Social Geeks":

"A funny thing happened on the way to the Star Trek convention. Technology crossed over from being a thing for introverts to being a thing for extroverts. While the cliché still hands on that devotees of technology are social "losers," the truth is that the most enthusiastic users of technology in America are also the most social people in America.

Geeks as we know them have all but disappeared. . .Once upon a time, working with technology provided an outlet for brilliant but anti-social people who found comfort in machines that responded to them in ways that people did not.

Being tech savvy was once socially disdained. Now it is at the center of organizing friends, parties, and the social life of the family."

I guess this means I no longer have to secret my copy of Maximum PC inside an issue of People magazine. Apparently, it's the non-iPod people who're missing the party. Penn continues:

"It's the reluctant users - the ones who buy and use technology only when they have to -who turn out to be the introverts. These people are not only less interested in technology, they are also less interested in sports, news, magazines, and fashion. And then tend to be more conservative and cautious all around."

While I'm not sure that I totally buy Penn's thesis -- he seems to be saying that people are either interested in the world around them or they're not -- I certainly welcome his observations as a useful antidote to the archetypical pocket-protector representation of tech types.

Me, cool? Who knew.