If any autistic could be made a savant.

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Alright here goes lets pretend tomorrow some university developed techniques to give savant like abilities to anyone on the autistic spectrum.

a) would that interest you.

b) would that greatly alter your view of what it means to be an aspie?

Absolutely it would interest me, I have extremely mild savant-like skills in regard to visual memory currently, but having something that is actually significant enough to get the label savant would be a great payoff in exchange for the lack of social skills. Being "less" than others by having average mental faculties coupled with poor social skills isn't really "fair" for lack of a better word, and to have something to make up for the deficit would be great. As for altering my view of what it means to be aspie, it might, because after this treatment I'd expect every aspie I came across to possess some superior skill as part of what defined them; anyone who didn't get the treatment and remained without a savant skill would be instinctively and unconsciously considered "odd" even to me as another aspie.

I would be more interested in novelty than usefulness. I would be interested in a memory enhancement more so to know what it's like when my memory works differently. I would also be interested in synaestesia and other forms of sensory processing differences.

I wouldn't want a useful savant ability but I would want something that would be interesting to live with and without. Pretty much all people only know one or the other. People with synaestesia never know anything different and neither do people without it. We only get to know our own perceptions in our lifetimes at the moment. If technology could allow us to experiment with our perceptions I would be more interested in that.

A savant ability would still be a nice bonus though.

I don't remember the name, but there was some eastern-european guy who turned several of his (NT) kids into chess masters by training them daily since early childhood. Same goes with chinese "tiger moms" who raise their children to play at least two instruments before grade school...

Talent certainly helps, but there's probably no skill you couldn't perfect by training fanatically.

wish i could have savant programming abilities.

It would be interesting, but I'm pretty leery of anything that would mess with my brain. If it were something like the TMS that can create weak savant-like abilities in NTs, then sure, I'd experiment with it; it might be useful. But if it were a permanent change--then heck no. I like who I am, and modifying me to become "better" is not something I want done.

No, it wouldn't change my perspective on autism.