The Asperger's-IT connection

Autism, though first identified and labeled in 1943, is still a poorly understood neurodevelopment disorder, and nearly every aspect of its causes, manifestations, research and cure is mired in controversy. Asperger's and HFA, being hard-to-define, often undiagnosed or underdiagnosed variants on the high end of the autism spectrum, are even less quantified or understood.

Diagnoses of autism, including Asperger's, have skyrocketed in the US in recent years -- the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now estimates that 1 in 150 8-year-old children has some form of autism.

It's not clear if the increase is because of better detection, a change in the diagnosis to include a wider range of behaviors, a true increase in case numbers, or some combination of those or other factors.

It's even less clear how many adults have Asperger's. Because Aspies are usually of average or above-average intelligence, they're often able to mask or accommodate their differences socially and in the workplace, meaning many of them make it well into middle age, or live their whole lives, without being formally diagnosed.

A spokesman for the US National Institute of Mental Health says that the agency is not aware of any government organization or academic research that tracks the incidence of AS in adults.

Where statistics come up short, anecdote is happy to take up the slack. Ask an Asperger's-aware techie if there is indeed a connection between AS and IT, and you're likely to get "affirmative, Captain."

When the question is put to Ryno, he e-mails back a visual:

And Bob, the database applications programmer, says, "Yes, it is a stereotype, and yes, there are a higher than average number of Aspies in high tech."

Nobody, it seems, has more to say on the subject than Temple Grandin, a fast-talking PhD Aspie professor who's the closest thing Asperger's has to an elder stateswoman. Grandin made her mark designing livestock-handling facilities from the point of view of the animal; she now has a thriving second career as an Asperger's author and speaker.

"Is there a connection between Asperger's and IT? We wouldn't even have any computers if we didn't have Asperger's," she declares. "All these labels -- "geek" and "nerd" and "mild Asperger's" -- are all getting at the same thing. ... The Asperger's brain is interested in things rather than people, and people who are interested in things have given us the computer you're working on right now."