It is easy to deride computer specialists as anorak-wearing geeks. It is also dangerous to take the caricature too far since it can quickly mutate into unreasoned prejudice. Business leaders, however, are concerned that, while computer science graduates have enviable technical expertise, they lack the personal and commercial skills required to find practical applications for their knowhow.

At times there is a mismatch between lecture theatre teaching and office or shop-floor requirements. Business trusts tried and tested technology but academics are excited by things nearer to the cutting edge. Yet unfamiliarity with old science is only part of the problem. Commercial results, it seems, would be much improved if IT graduates were better able to sit with nonspecialists, acquire an understanding of their business needs and explain what technology can do to assist. It might clarify explanations of why old systems might be replaced and how the things business cares about - standards of service and costs – might be effected. For better or worse.

There is no doubt that the silicon chip has changed lives over the past 25 years. Few people have not been untouched – every second person on the planet now has a mobile phone, for instance. Computers have also revolutionised industry, raising productivity, improving standards of living and automating some dangerous or tedious jobs. Yet plenty of people, especially in developing nations, do not enjoy the fruits. More technology should mean that more things will be done for more people, more rapidly, more cheaply while using less of the world’s finite resources.

Progress, on the other hand, will be impeded if geekishness becomes more entrenched. It may make business leaders, and those running social enterprises up to and including the NHS, less inclined to explore the potential of computer science. Misunderstanding may lead some to make expensive mistakes. Meanwhile, if computer science becomes less fashionable fewer talented young people will opt to take it on. As things stand, there is a worrying danger that school-age students are only willing to seek superficial knowledge about computers. Yes, the ability to navigate around an Excel spreadsheet may be of greater practical value to a student of English or biology than understanding how bits and bytes fit together. And yes, a surfeit of academic expertise can lead to commercial sterility that some fear is currently the case. But if learning becomes too focused on practical applications, there is a danger that too few students will become technically expert at university level and beyond.

Geeks without technical knowledge are even less use than scientific experts who struggle to hold a meaningful and mutually useful conversation with a colleague, contact or client. Many people who buy a computer do not have the patience or persistence to read the instruction manual and rightly expect their equipment to be intuitive. It is inevitable that the geek will talk in a language, computer code, unintelligible to the great mass of people who flick on a phone or switch on a computer screen, and yet geeks who celebrate the arcane and have contempt for e-empathy are limiting their ability to change lives for the better. We should cherish the geeks among us and marvel at their i-intellect, but should also gently shepherd them towards society and salience.