::scr The Geek Syndrome

[Chris Ball]

On Fri, 2001-12-07 at 14:25, Simon Wistow wrote:
> The whole Asperger's/Dyspraxia/Dyslexia-with-respect-to-hackers thing is
> something I've been mulling about for a few years - I wnated to go to
> university and do Cognitive Psychology with the view to doing a PhD on
> this. Hence the name check at the end of this mail.

I have a friend with diagnosed Asperger's at Uni.  We joke about it a
lot; I'm quite definitely more withdrawn and socially inept than
himself.  He says he's happy to think that he's been 'diagnosed Geek'. 

I think I've been diagnosed with Dyspraxia myself.  I was immensely
clumsy and dumb and broken when I was a small child, and lots of
supposedly smart people told my parents helpful things like "Yes, he'll
never be able to understand algebra or symbolism." - which links to the
reason I say that I _think_ I've been diagnosed with Dyspraxia; I don't
remember much from back then, and soon after the algebra incident my
parents stopped telling me much of what was said.  It'd be strange to
ask now, so I haven't.

I /think/ I'm fine with Algebra, being half way through a Computation
degree, but.. *shrug*.  I keep wondering when there's going to be
something that I can't handle at all.  I'm sure it'll happen eventually.

> It does seem to me that geeks/nerds/techies [DELETE as appropriate] do
> tend to exhibit some or all of the symptons of these syndromes. There
> are also other trends such as almost universally bad handwriting (even
> before extended contact with computers precluded writing stuff by hand.

Yep, certainly was in my case.  I remember being the only person in my
class in primary school who had to stay writing in pencil when everyone
else was given a pen.  :-)

> Is this something other people have noticed? I'm mildly dyslexic - I
> have problems 'seeing' word endings especially if I wrote them and will
> often write "th end" and such. Are other people dyslexic?

I'm not at all dyslexic.  I've certainly found many dyslexics who are
far better programmers than myself, though.

- ~C, shortly off to buy a copy of Wired.
-- 
$a="printf.net"; Chris Ball | chris@void.$a | www.$a | finger: chris@$a
         "In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded."