"those with a freakish knack for manipulating abstract symbols"
The downside of the growing public awareness of people on the autism spectrum, some of whom are geeks, has been the slow trend towards conflating intellectualism with atypical mental function.
Some people like to call right now the "victory of the geeks". I suspect that within the next 10 years, nerdy kids will start being diagnosed as having Asperger's by school counselors and the like with about as much care, caution, and accuracy as we saw with ADHD.
The downside of the growing public awareness of people on the autism spectrum, some of whom are geeks, has been the slow trend towards conflating intellectualism with atypical mental function.
Some people like to call right now the "victory of the geeks". I suspect that within the next 10 years, nerdy kids will start being diagnosed as having Asperger's by school counselors and the like with about as much care, caution, and accuracy as we saw with ADHD.