My article about Asperger's syndrome and geeks (Score 4)

Many thanks for all the fascinating and very informative replies about my column in The Los Angeles Times this morning, about Asperger's syndrome and "geeks."

I want to point out that while I did discuss a *possible* link between this syndrome and the stereotype of computer geeks, this is controversial (which I tried to point out), speculative, and subject to a zillion different interpretations. I did mention that it's not necessary to have any kind of mental syndrome or specific personality trait to be successful with computers; indeed, I know many first-rate programmers and hardware engineers who have none of the qualities associated with Asperger's syndrome or any other identifiable syndrome. I said that some people who have this syndrome, or who may have it in a mild form, may simply be attracted to computers as a field of work. Of course, the idea of a "mild" form of a mental syndrome is controversial in itself. We're talking about the human brain, the biggest mystery in the world.

I didn't mention this in the article, but it's controversial about how common Asperger's syndrome is too, although the ballpark figure seems to be somewhere between 1 in 500 to 1 in a thousand, which seems to me pretty high. So even if this syndrome has no connection at all to computer professionals, there may be a lot of syndrome examples among us.

I didn't know about the opinions of / participants regarding Thomas Edison. :-) I probably could not have mentioned Tesla, anyway, since too few people in the general public have ever heard of him. Anyway, Edison is sometimes mentioned as a figure of the past who seems to fit the Asperger's syndrome picture -- Emily Dickinson, too, by the way. (Most Asperger's syndrome patients are male, however.)

I tried to mention (and close with) the "geek's perspective," which is probably shared by many non-geeks as well: this syndrome stuff doesn't really matter. We all have a complex mix of genetic, environmental and historical inputs into our consciousness and personalities, and we all fall somewhere on a very wide spectrum of human behaviors. In terms of human ecology, each person certainly must have a role in the total story of the species.

-- Gary

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