Understanding Autism: The Computer Analogy

PLEASE NOTE THAT I AM SPEAKING FROM MY OWN EXPERIENCES AND THAT I HAVE NO QUALIFICATION ON THE SUBJECT BEYOND JUST BEING SOMEONE WHO HAS AUTISM

Over the years I have found it difficult to understand what about having autism made me different from everyone else. It’s hard to explain what it is while it is very easy to describe the various ways autism affects day to day life. It’s hard for someone without autism to really understand what it feels like to be autistic.

When I say this I am obviously talking about the emotional, physical, and mental component and not the societal component because that is a whole other can of worms that needs to be addressed on its own.

Years ago I fell in love with a tv show Called “Chuck” and over time it provided me the best possible template to really explain what autism is on a fundamental level. The show regularly compares the human brain to a computer with how it can store and process information and it made me take a step back and consider that if all brains are computers how would autism differ from allistic brains (allistic just means not autistic- fyi).

Consider that every human brain is a computer then consider how a majority of the population are running on iOS and apple devices. The iOS operating system is incredibly user friendly and easy to access and makes routine tasks work with little to no problems at all.

Now let’s say that all autistic folks are running on windows computers. I’m sure everyone has used the windows Operating System at least once in their life and will get what I am trying to say. Windows is very buggy- there’s a million and one background processes going at any one time that slows the whole system down and even causes it to crash.

This is what it is like to have autism!

There’s way too much information bouncing around the brain at any one time and it takes away from other “programs” we might try to run. Sometimes to help these tasks function the brain will shut down “programs” like how one would open a task manager to end tasks that are taking too much RAM. As a result the brain will make stuff unusable- like how a good percentage of us are either totally non-verbal or (like me) prone to becoming non-verbal when stressed out.

It is this over abundance of brain activity that defines our day to day lives. As a result of this we have little to no ability to cope when we are forced out of our comfort zone because it just makes the whole system prone to “overheating” at a much faster rate. Our brains process and use information in vastly different ways from allistics and it is why sensory overload is so common.

In order for us to keep the “RAM” from being a hinderance we tend to focus as much as possible on something. This is commonly referred to as a special interest and it is how we manage to make this overstimulated brain work to our advantage. We devote almost all of our attention on something that can ground us and keep us from noticing the hyperactivity of our thoughts.

Mine is storytelling. Almost everything I like is an extension of my passion for storytelling- even this analogy is the result of a tv show I watched. I see things within stories and narratives that tend to be overlooked and why I also tend to have eyebrows raised at me when I say something like “The Star Wars Prequels are good” or “Book 2 of Korra is underrated” because I notice things about the characters and narrative that most don’t even consider- in fact the original premise of my critical analysis series was to explain why I like something that is commonly hated. It’s also why the MCU became a massive obsession because it had so many narratives playing off each other in unique ways for a visual medium.

But I digress- The point I am trying to make is that being autistic just means that we run on a different operating system- very user unfriendly and prone to crashing but once we learn to work with the program there’s no telling what can be accomplished!