Asperger's: an adaption to technological progress?

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I've been thinking. Very recently our technology has flourished. It helps in one's understanding of science and technology to have appreciation and good judgment on these subjects, e.g., logical and mathematical intelligence.

Could it be that autism is an exaggeration, or possibly even the perfection, of these abilities and appreciations as a result of genetic recombination, and that this perfection has just happened to come along with social eccentricity?

I think it depends, I don't know much about computers, but I can draw on it and stuff. Still, I don't think it has anything to do with genetics, because my dad and my mom had no computer skills until they were taught to use it in their jobs. For the most part I think everyone's catching onto computers, not just the aspies, and anyone can be good with them after enough training. C:

The world is getting more and more phony and people are becoming less and less direct in their communication. I'm hardly perfect for this world.

I agree with Greentea.

I think AS might stem from an inability to handle contradictions (hence the appeal of logic and mathematical code). Post-modern culture is fragmented, chaotic, ironic and superficial: it places style and image before real-life substance. To live easily in this environment, you need to be able to ignore the resulting 'reality gaps' between the hype and what's actually happening. People with AS do not seem able to do this, and as a result they become overwhelmed by the sheer complexity of the world around them.

One of the many ironies of AS is that the desire for truth and logic leads many Aspies to specialise in fields such as mathematics, science and computing where rules are usually clearly defined and thus ambiguity is kept to a minimum. HOWEVER developments in these fields generally lead to increased, rather than decreased, levels of complexity in day-to-day life (for example, trying to order something online is often frustratingly difficult compared to buying over the counter, because systems cannot always understand you like another person would). The availability of technology such as mobile phones and e-mail should have made our lives easier - and to a certain extent they have - but at the same time we are now expected to be 'switched on' 24 hours a day, and to cram a lot more work into every day because the machines make this possible.

I don't think it's a strong enough genetic selector for that to be plausible.

It's an interesting thought, though.

And that doesn't mean that autistic traits aren't precious bits of the gene pool that ought to be preserved as necessary diversity. . .

Maybe, I'm not so sure about this one.

YES
AS sufferers can certainly adapt faster to new technology and without the AS sufferers and geeks of Silicon Valley the world would be a very different place.

NO
I suspect that AS has always been with us, just undiagnosed or unrecognized. Einstein and J Robert Oppenheimer were almost certainly AS sufferers and they did their greatest work decades ago. I suspect (although I cannot prove) that my father was an AS sufferer although in his case he focused his life around religion rather than a technical subject.

I think I will track this subject for a while and see what comes up, interesting idea.

Ed Almos

No.
This subject always pops up now and again.
We have only had "technology" for 300 years. Humans can't adapt genetically to anything in such a short time.
It takes tens of thousands of years for small changes to take place. And now that we have advanced medicine,
we are in a "passive" natural selection, which means it's kind of "slower" or "less powerful" than in our past.

I don't think autism is more common than it was before. It's rather the obsession with social rules in the western world in large that has forced a situation where we need diagnoses. Before (and still of course) there were other ways of describing the adult autistic personality type, and other explanations as to why this personality type existed.

Interesting theory...

I don't think though, that autism has anything to do with the way people are adapting to technology. And I certainly don't think that genetics has anything to do with it either.

People with autism may seem more able to understand the technological process at times more than the average person, but it has nothing to do with genetics.
Since people with autism find it difficult, or sometimes near impossible to understand people and the world around them, they will find something else to understand with depth, as much as the NT world understands socialisation.

Well, this is just my theory.

Especially as technology actively discourages evolution. If we have a problem interacting with our environment, we tend to change the environment until it suits us better, rather than adapting to it.