a reasonable solution to autism speaks vs autistics conflict

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I agree...."hacking autism" to me sounds destructive because we assocate hacking with invasion and destruction.
They could have used a better word.

I think "bridging autism" would be more possitive although not as trendy but still a better mental image and better message.

I couldn't think of anything better than hacking autism; that would be perfect. The key I think is positive or neutral verbs associated with autism that don't bring up the pictures in the mind that some of the phrases in the past and present do.

Combating autism has to be the worse one I've seen since eradicating autism, which I think was understood to be a mistake soon after it was said. Most anything would have been better, even the autism research act. Autism Act would have been good enough.

They had good intentions, just didn't understand the literal impact of words on autistic people.

I remember someone saying stuffed shirt in reference to someone without a personality, when I was about 18. All I could think of was the scarecrow man from the wizard of Oz.

A flannel shirt stuffed with straw.

It's weird how I would just let stuff like that go, for years satisfied with the picture in my mind knowing it was a general insult of somekind, rather asking someone what they meant by it. The literal picture in my mind was all I got out of it. I think I figured it out 10 or 15 years later, an aha moment, that I guess most people get when they first hear it.

Literal thinking, an interesting phenomenon, let's one see the good in the bad and the bad in the good, no questions asked.

Erm I am sorry but on another thread you were saying that autistics apparently aren't good at metaphors and such. Thus if they are reading in to a meaning that is offensive then obviously they must have a point. With hacking there is a negative connotation. That isn't literal-mindedness. Shows you're trying to say red is blue and orange is purple.

Last edited by Gedrene on 26 Oct 2011, 6:52 am, edited 1 time in total.

Thanks for the link.

Note that "hacking" does not mean "cracking", although most people seem to think so. I have always been a hacker. Only once did I ever "crack" into a system... and then, only by chance, plus I reported their security problem to the people concerned.

So far as Autism Speaks is concerned, I still don't like them, but the list of "apps" they are developing doesn't seem too bad. I wonder how much money Autism Speaks will make from them? Although the apps will be "offered free to the community", I'm sure Autism Speaks will make certain they get some sort of "donate to us" hook into there, somehow.

I'm disappointed that HP have teamed up with Autism Speaks for this stuff. If they had just stuck with the Doug Flutie mob, http://www.flutiefoundation.org/, it would have been cleaner (but see below).

<hacker mode="on"/>

So far as http://www.hackingautism.org/ goes, I won't be looking at that site, as it requires JavaScript to be enabled, and I don't think that equates with accessibility. Plus it is riddled with HTML/CSS errors.

Similarly, I won't be looking at the website of the registrant for the above site, http://goodbysilverstein.com/, which requires Flash. It is not too bad with its XHTML/CSS, except that, among other things, they don't know that their own company name ("Goodby, Silverstein & Partners") must have the "&" replaced with "&amp;" in order to be valid. Note that they are an ad agency used by HP: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodby,_Silverstein_%26_Partners.

I wonder why the "Doug Flutie, Jr. Foundation for Autism", which sounds so "above board", should have registered flutiefoundation.org via http://www.domainsbyproxy.com, which is designed to conceal the identity of the registrant.

<hacker mode="off"/>

Or ads, such as we might see on this web site. Things cost money.
Or they might just use the fund raising methods they currently do. These are not bad things, its the way 'its' done to use a metaphor.

Yes, the fultie foundation is an example of people who don't actually have excuses to make because they haven't done anything egregiously wrong.

I don't think I follow you.
I don't see ads (AdBlock). Free things don't cost money.
The fund raising methods they've used, to date, have been pretty evil.
I think your last sentence should read "These are bad things, it's the way it's done, not to use a metaphor."

:)

I can, but could we not say things like nvious? Because they aren't envious of us. They want to 'save their children' and are blinded by a lack of real knowledge or direction. If you want to help then please tell the truth about your opposition and judge whether they are opposition fairly. It doesn't sound honest when you say you're not a supremacist when you say they envy you when they don't. They fear all.

@gedrene i didn't say that i replied to an earlier post. i can reply positively without believing every word of what someone posted.

Pardon? I am sure there was some miscommunication there because I don't think I talked about posts. I was saying stop thinking anyone is envious of us. They aren't.

my point was that i don't think i said that. i replied to someone who said that then you replied third thinking i said that.

Apologies. I was wrong. It was androbot. I am sorry for making this mistake.

The apps might be free to the community but someone somewhere developed them, so someone somewhere likely paid for that.
I'd like some evidence of their evil fund raising deeds. Drug running, money landering..the usual.

The metaphor hacking autism is intended as a positive metaphor to crack the code of communication problems of autism and provide a solution to help people with autism communicate with technological devices.

If one takes it literally it can have a negative connotation. Either hacking a person with autism with a machete, hacking into a person's mind with autism, or any other negative interpretation that involves the literal meaning of the words.

It can give a person a negative picture in their mind, if they don't understand the intended metaphor.

Anyone could potentially misinterpret the metaphor, it's just more likely that an autistic person would read it literally and interpret it literally, because in general autistic people are commonly understood to understand language in a literal way, having greater difficulty reading between the lines and understanding metaphor.

Given that understanding, it would be nice if people coming up with these catchy phrases would consider this, and use ones that have a more positive literal interpretation.

People that market focus on the target audience. In this case it is not people with autism, it is people that fund autism, that the marketing team does not see as a group of autistic individuals.

It's a tough call for them, because these words that literally can mean a bad thing, but actually are intended as a good thing through metaphor, is what get's the target audience's attention.

Helping people with Autism communicate through technological devices doesn't do the trick. Although bridging autism produces a much more positive image initially, it doesn't grab the attention that "Hacking Autism or Combating Autism" does, for the target audience.

The messages about autism are becoming more positive as time goes by, so it appears that some are acknowledging this reality for the good of all autistic people.

I noticed recently in a Time magazine that an advertisement compared the chance of autism with becoming a professional athlete.

It portrays the message that autism is a problem, but at least for children with autism that see it they won't get a picture of cancer or aids in their mind when they look at the advertisement, as those conditions have been used to compare statistics before.

The issue with literal interpretation is more of one for autistic children than autistic adults; some adults learn to accommodate it better as they get older.

I pretty much agree with all you said, but the above points are particularly significant.

Autism Speaks have yet again made zero attempt to think through their (or rather, HP's) campaign slogan. I suspect that, if they have any autistics on board, those autistics would easily have seen (as you have) the ambiguities present in "hacking autism".

Furthermore, to the majority of NTs, I would guess that the negative connotations are what will taken... at least subconsciously, motivating them to donate. Nice trick.