Neophile or Neophiliac, a term popularised by author Robert Anton Wilson, is a personality type characterized by a strong affinity for novelty.
Robert Anton Wilson speculates in his 1983 book Prometheus Rising that the Industrial Revolution and related enlightenment represents one of the first periods of history in which neophiles were a dominant force in society.
Wilson observes that neophobes tend to regard neophiles, especially extreme ones, with fear and contempt, and to brand them with titles such as "witch," "satanist," "heretic," etc.
Open-source advocate and programmer Eric S. Raymond observes that this personality is especially prevalent in certain fields of expertise; in business, these are primarily computer science and other areas of high technology.
All these groups overlap heavily and (where evidence is available) seem to share characteristic hacker tropisms for science fiction, music.Research has uncovered a possible link between certain predisposition to some kind of neophilia and increased levels of the enzyme monoamine oxidase A.