Not all the features of atypical human operating systems are bugs.

One way to understand neurodiversity is to remember that just because a PC is not running Windows doesn't mean that it's broken. One reason that the vast majority of autistic adults are chronically unemployed or underemployed, consigned to make-work jobs like assembling keychains in sheltered workshops, is because HR departments are hesitant to hire workers who look, act, or communicate in non-neurotypical ways-say, by using a keyboard and text-to-speech software to express themselves, rather than by chattering around the water cooler.

Thinking this way is no mere exercise in postmodern relativism. 'Who can say what form of wiring will prove best at any given moment? Cybernetics and computer culture, for example, may favor a somewhat autistic cast of mind.' 'Neurodiversity may be every bit as crucial for the human race as biodiversity is for life in general,' he declared. The new word first appeared in print in a 1998 Atlantic article about Wired magazine's website, HotWired, by journalist Harvey Blume. 'I was interested in the liberatory, activist aspects of it,' Singer explained to journalist Andrew Solomon in 2008, 'to do for neurologically different people what feminism and gay rights had done for their constituencies.' By autistic standards, the 'normal' human brain is easily distractible, is obsessively social, and suffers from a deficit of attention to detail. Echoing positive terms like biodiversity and cultural diversity, her neologism called attention to the fact that many atypical forms of brain wiring also convey unusual skills and aptitudes.Īutistic people, for instance, have prodigious memories for facts, are often highly intelligent in ways that don't register on verbal IQ tests, and are capable of focusing for long periods on tasks that take advantage of their natural gift for detecting flaws in visual patterns. In a radical stroke, she hoped to shift the focus of discourse about atypical ways of thinking and learning away from the usual litany of deficits, disorders, and impairments.

In the late 1990s, a sociologist named Judy Singer-who is on the autism spectrum herself-invented a new word to describe conditions like autism, dyslexia, and ADHD: neurodiversity.

NeuroDiversity by Judy Singer