For those of you not up to date with what's happening in movie theatres these days: Lost In Space is based upon the Sci-Fi TV series of the same name. Not that you'd know this series, it's ancient. The movie is a shambles: as with a lot of big budget productions currently, it seems to be intended to display the latest special effects technology rather than to tell a story. Even the cast, which for once doesn't consist of nobodies but of actual actors like William Hurt, Mimi Rogers, Matt LeBlanc, Heather Graham and so on, is clueless as to why they're in the movie.

Now I must admit: I already knew this. I had read dozens of reviews, and none of them were in the least bit sympathetic towards the movie. But I had also read an article on the special effects used in it, and my colleagues at work who had seen the movie told me that the images indeed had to be seen to be believed. On top of that I had been in a Sci-Fi mood for some time: I had downloaded the incredible trailers for Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace and Star Trek: Insurrection and played them dozens of times.

And thus I spent one perfectly good evening watching a rubbish movie. Knowingly.

I wasn't always like this, you know. Once upon a time I was a passionate journalist, infested with the writing bug since my early years. I always knew what I wanted to be: some sort of author. Throughout the years I also developed a passion for culture: music, books, movies, TV and so on. Combining the both would have been my dream job.

So what happened? Where did it all go wrong?

Well, I blame Prince. You see, along the way, Prince and his music became one of the subjects I care most about. But after reading half a dozen books and subscribing to several fanmags, I still felt the need for more information. Most importantly, I wanted to know it all as early as possible. So I turned to the Internet.

To put it bluntly: I got hooked. Pretty soon I decided: I can do this too. And so I made my own website. But it didn't stop there. I discovered JavaScript, database-websites, server-side scripting ... Wanting to learn more about this, I enrolled in a course. Six months later, I became a web application developer at iM@Gic, one of Belgium's leading Internet firms.

But somewhere down the line, I changed. Instead of magazines about pop culture, I now buy ones that teach me how to improve my scripts, or that tell me about the future of the web. Most of the books I've read in the past year were work-related, the rest were about music. I cannot remember when I've last read an actual novel.

More significantly, I'm annoyed when I miss an episode of Star Trek (any of the new series). Most of the conversations I have at work during lunch are either about really old PCs or about the philosophies behind Star Trek. I got myself an Internet connection at home so I could download my email (which for the major part is work-related) during weekends or holidays. Occasionally I dream in HTML of Perl.

I have to face it: over the course of a year I've become a nerd. Most of my friends have too. I never even noticed the change. Not that this new personality of mine is a bad thing per se. After all, us nerds will inherit this world, since only we will know how it functions.

Mark my words: forget about the Y2K problem. That is going to be peanuts compared to what will happen on May 21, 1999. On that day, every computer-savvy human being is going to be in a cinema, watching Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace.

And if they're saying they're not, then they're not truly one of us.