Technological Autism
October 22, 2007 by Kristina Chew, PhD
Filed under Health
William Bunn in the October 22nd Globe and Mail coins the phrase or rather creates a new diagnostic subcategory, “technological autism,” for those individuals who, due to obsessive, repetitive, and near-constant use of such devices as iPods, cell phones, Blackberrys, and the like, display (according to Bunn) certain symptoms of autism as defined in the DSM-IV. Due to the excessive overuse of all gizmos techological, people are suffering “qualitative impairments of communication” as text-messaging comes to substitute for talking, so actually looking another human being in the face and emitting words and language (which comes from the Latin word for “tongue,” lingua—perhaps communicating solely by text might rather be called digitage, after the Latin word for “finger,” digitus).
At the risk of striking a more positive note in view of Bunn’s new condition of “technological autism,” defined as “a pervasive disorder induced through the use of technology, I’ll hazard that we ought perhaps to take a bit of comfort in this. Perhaps the world, or society, or culture, or human behavior, or something, is evolving (devolving, some would say) to be more like whatever it is about my son that gives him an autism diagnosis. Who knows but some sort of “autism” might be the new “norm”……….
The Globe and Mail guy is echoing Stanley Bing, who Steve blogged about.
I certainly think that autism is becoming a more prevalent meme. Both of these writers are using the term because the meme has been occupying space in their heads. I think that it is likely that this will mean that autistic people will be better understood, valued and accommodated by society at large in coming years.
My own students are quite unable to spend more than a few minutes without their “devices.” And I think that their regular “interfacing” with these does not necesarily negatively impede on their learning experience. Thanks for linking to Steve’s post and sometimes I wonder if there might be a meme in the very notion of “what will people see as ‘autism’ next.”
Interesting idea… I know it’s often been said that many engineers and scientists and computer programmers have a lot of qualities in common with AS, though I’ve never thought of it going so far as to say that this is directly affected by technology itself.
It’s late so excuse some fuzzy off the top of the head opinion, but the term that I might use instead of autism is addiction.
Substitute slot machine for blackberry, and consider some of the behavior in Vegas and Atlantic City and see what you think.
I’m not sure whether technological autism is necessarily going to lead to more empathy if the users of the technology are checked out playing with the devices–they might be less sensitive to differences because of lack of notice, but I wouldn’t be certain of the translation to understanding. From what I could tell, the tenor of the article was not particularly positive.
Not trying to be argumentative–it was just how my mind turned on the question. :-/.