I just finished reading this book, by Benjamin Nugent, and I think it's great. So I do a search here, and based on what's on the internet about it, people here hate it. (Anyone else actually read it?)
Two previous threads (which to bump? Neither):
http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt66574.html
http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt69944.html
Here's what he actually wrote in the book (or at least what I got out of it). Brief summary:
200 years ago. Industrial revolution. People feel threatened by technology. -> Two classes of people: jocks and popular types trying not to be sucked in by technology/urbanization, and people enthralled by new technology. Jocks/popular types diss techies, and haven't stopped yet. Techies now called nerds.
What are nerds? People who like tech. Why do people like tech? Well, sometimes it's fun. But sometimes people become nerds as a way of avoiding other things. Nugent was a nerd because he was bad at sports and needed to compensate. Two of his nerd friends were from dysfunctional families and needed the ordered nerd world to compensate (escape from chaos into nice fantasy world where powers measured by points - they played D&D). Another book I just reread (Down and out in Silicon Valley, by Mel Krantzler and Patricia Biondi Krantzler, 2002) described how high tech types who overdo the techie thing are often overimmersing themselves in tech in order to avoid traumatic childhood issues. Nothing yet about autism. Though I can see how nerd-land would be appealing to some autistic people, too, because of how ordered and sane it is.
Overall: 1. Nerds are machine-like, or seen as machine-like, because of techno-phobia on the part of people who don't like modernization. Nerds represent the threat of technology. Even if nobody liked technology (and wanted to be a nerd), I'd bet some people would find other people to project this stuff on to, because that's what people do.
and 2. Nerds like tech because it seems saner than other stuff out there, like abusive relationships (or sensory overload?).
The chapter on autism got autism all wrong. He actually buys into the theory of mind/no empathy/extreme male brain crap, which, considering his analysis of nerdiness in the rest of the book, is pretty naive.
My impression is that, based on his analysis of the historical/cultural meaning of nerdiness in general, autism/Aspergers is slapped with the machine-mind stereotypes for the same reason nerds in general are: because people feel threatened by technology and need someone to project that on to. I don't think the stereotype fits us very well, and promoting it could probably make things worse for us as a group, since many of us are not nerds in a cultural sense (though some are). We just have a hard time following conversations (not the same thing at all).
Thoughts?
05 Feb 2009, 11:11 pm
