Seeing What Others Cannot See by Thomas G. West

Author:Thomas G. West
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781633883024
Publisher: Prometheus Books
Published: 2017-06-13T04:00:00+00:00

“BEING DYSLEXIC”—THE MIT DISEASE

The varied talent mix of dyslexics seems to be especially well recognized in the world of computers—where performance is measured by demonstrating working systems and where anticipating technological trends is more highly valued than paper credentials and traditional academic skills.

One of the leading visionary thinkers in the computer field is Nicholas Negroponte, the dyslexic founder of the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). More than a decade ago, he and others started work to form the Media Lab, which was to be based on the idea that major industries—such as publishing, telecommunications, television, feature film, and computers—would all converge rapidly over time until at a certain point it would be hard to tell which was which. Of course, now these predictions are seen as splendidly and universally justified, as we are daily confronted by the reality of these expectations.

In early 1995, Negroponte published Being Digital, a book of essays—based on a series of columns in the magazine Wired—about the likely and varied longer-term effects of the computer revolution. Since the book is so explicitly focused on computers, it is quite remarkable that the first and last sentences of his introduction, “The Paradox of a Book,” refer not to computers but instead to his own dyslexia and his difficulties with reading. The book begins: “Being Dyslexic, I don't like to read books.” And pages later we read, “So why [have I written] an old-fashioned book…especially one without a single illustration?”9 He gives several reasons. Among these are the advantages inherent in the vagueness of words. When you read, he notes, more is left to the imagination and more is drawn from your own personal experience. In contrast, he observes that “like a Hollywood film, multimedia narrative” provides such detailed and realistic representations of things that “less and less are left to the mind's eye.” Consequently, finishing his introduction, he says: “You are expected to read yourself into this book. And I say that as someone who does not like to read.” Thus, we see a remarkable example of one of the leading and most prescient communicators of the digital revolution referring in his book repeatedly to his own reading problems. It is also notable that on radio programs during his book tour for Being Digital, Negroponte observed that links between dyslexia and talent are often observed at MIT; indeed, these observations are so frequent that sometimes dyslexia is called “the MIT disease.”10

Some months later, Negroponte was featured on the cover of Wired magazine to celebrate the Media Lab's first ten years. Playing on the title of Negroponte's book, the Wired article begins: “Being Nicholas—The Media Lab's visionary founder…is the most wired man we know (and that is saying something).” During the interview, Negroponte is asked whether he would rather read text on a computer screen or on paper. His answer reveals the matter-of-fact, by-the-way manner in which many successful dyslexics have come more and more to speak of their difficulties: “I don't read long articles period.

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