What would tech look like if Aspies ran the tech industry?

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MaxE
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Today, 9:43 am

Yeah I know people like to claim that Bill Gates is on the spectrum (I happen not to agree) but there is nothing remotely autistic about the Apple ecosystem that has come to monopolize consumer tech.

I can recall that, during the early days of the WWW, the technology allowed me to communicate via text and not in real time, especially as to me autism is closely associated with difficulty processing information in real time.

But today's technology is moving increasingly to verbal interaction with devices i.e. you are expected to interact with devices by talking with them, and information is by preference consumed by listening to podcasts or watching videos rather than by reading and following links. I think this makes technology much less friendly to people on the spectrum. What technology would you be most comfortable with?


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__Elijahahahaho
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Today, 10:07 am

I think that "industry" contains the assumption of bringing stuff to market
in a kind of game involving money and demand from others.

If those others are NT majority, then the aspies will figure out
similar stuff to whoever is running the system now.

If society however, had aspie values, and this dominated tech development,
it is still uncertain how this would go, since aspies are so varied. Maybe there
would be a large number of very specialised but very high-quality products
for niche areas.

I think that aspies tend to focus more on seeking truth, like aaron schwartz,
so we would have a true free internet without predatory lawsuits etc.



Fenn
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Today, 10:12 am

You make a good point. Things used to be more geek friendly in computers. Several “improvements” do seem to be in the neurotypical direction more than the autism friendly direction.

But don’t forget Linux. On my Mac Laptop at home and my Windows laptop at work I still spend most of my time in a bash/terminal emulator and I often find it works well with my brain.

I like having a good hi res screen for displaying graphs and diagrams.


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ToughDiamond
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Today, 3:48 pm

I guess it might be a lot more geeky like it used to be, and if so that would suit me, as long as it was geeky in my kind of way. In my experience, I can only easily communicate with the small subset of geeky people who think like I do. It's hard to pin down what it is about their communication that makes it right or wrong for me though.

Good point about the move away from the written word and towards real-time video calls. I was happy enough with simple email, but these days I know people who can't remember how to check their emails because they've got everything they need from more "advanced" communication platforms. Even the weather websites, though they're better than a live, spoken weather bulletin on television, seem to have to have a feature with a talking head. That's bizarre to me. All I want is a table of the numbers, preferably downloadable.

But I suppose the problem, even if Aspies ran the show, would be down to money. Somebody has to pay for the servers, therefore service providers are under pressure to advertise or charge more. And it seems that those who use stealth to track and advertise to unsuspecting customers get away with it and are less likely to go to the wall than those who just provide a no-nonsense, honest service.

Still, maybe my preferences have more to do with my personality than with ASD. I have trouble coming to terms with the fact that most people out there aren't as radically opposed as I am to advertising and (what I would call) the pointless bells and whistles that get in the way of quality content. I don't know. Could it be that the "pathological" honesty associated with ASD would lead to a better world if everybody was that way inclined instead of the more usual NT way of paying lip service to honesty while failing to actually be sincere?