It is uncontentious to suggest that those with autism tend to have some kind of special relationship with technology. An abundance of reports from parents and clinicians take it largely for granted that children with autism are attracted or drawn to various kinds of technological devices (Colby, 1973). More formal evidence for such a relationship has come from research into the use of assistive technologies (Wainer and Ingersoll, 2011, Goldsmith and LeBlanc, 2004). Elsewhere, support comes from research into the profiles of autistic children, where a disproportionate number of those with autism are male and offspring of engineers and mathematicians (Wheelwright and Baron-Cohen, 2001). Support is also found in claims that there are dramatic increases in the prevalence of autism in high-technology regions such as Silicon Valley (Silberman, 2000).

A central feature of these reports is the idea that technology presents a more comfortable or more manageable interface between those with autism and aspects of a social world that are often experienced as mysterious and unsettling. Whilst a few studies exist that focus upon implications that follow from such a relationship for our understanding of autism, as far as I know there are none that ask if such a relationship might tell us something about the nature of technology. This is the general motivation of this chapter.

More specifically, this chapter summarises the main features of autism as it is currently understood along with a discussion of prominent theories used to explain it. An account of these broad features is then given in terms of the conception of technology developed in preceding chapters, focusing upon the nature of the relationship between those with autism and technology. A central focus is upon the different kinds of isolatability that exist in reality and that are particularly relevant to an understanding of technology. My main argument is then that difficulties in coping with inherently unisolatable phenomena both prompt an attraction to technological devices and encourage particular kinds of relations to it. Finally, some implications are considered.