Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Is Narrow Vision Better? Part Two


Somebody told me recently that she had heard that without individuals with Aspergers Syndrome, there would be no NASA.  I definitely believe it.  I grew up watching the film "Apollo 13."  In this film, the Saturn V spacecraft carrying Jim Lovell and his crew to the moon had an unprecedented problem that left the spacecraft crippled.  Not only did they have to abort the moon landing, but each day became a fight for survival.  Their safe landing would not have been possible without the help of the ground crew below.

This is April of 1970, where the laptop I am using to type this blog post is probably more sophisticated than the computers NASA had access to at the time.  They succeeded through problem solving and pushing the machinery available to the absolute limits.  I can picture those with Aspergers Syndrome that may have worked without an official diagnosis, contributing their narrow vision and high intelligence to the tasks at hand.

Through narrow vision, an individual on the high functioning end of the autism spectrum can examine a small range of products and ideas with utmost efficiency and understanding.  In a range of problems where this type of thinking is advantageous, these individuals can really shine.  This does not mean that we should not be encouraged to broaden our horizons, although we might resist.  In my next post, I will discuss how narrow vision might be problematic and what solutions I have used to overcome these challenges.

1 comment:

Valerie said...

Very interesting Ryan! I enjoyed reading this!

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