As a person who lived through this as a kid, I want to express my strong support for your comment, and provide +1 data point.

IT going mainstream made life a bit easier for us - if you say you're a programmer, people no longer roll their eyes. But that's not because geeky/nerdy lifestyle is more accepted now. It isn't. If I say to my cow-orkers that I code a lot after work, most will be looking at me like a weirdo just as much as my classmates did when I was in secondary school. People who care about technology on an intellectual level - not just on a money-making level, or shiny-trinket level, are still rare and still treated as the weird ones.