Computers with Aspergers

 

I saw this posted on reddit and thought it should be spread around because it's a great metaphor and I found it really funny. I also appreciated it because it's an easy way to explain some aspects of asperger's to people. While this could also be achieved by recommending the book "All Cats Have Asperger's," I like computers much more than I like cats. On to today's borrowed brilliance:

I think my computer is suffering from Asperger syndrome and some advice would be appreciated. :(
It's just these little things that made notice it and got me a little worried. For instance: when I ask it to do a lot of things at once by incoherent commands, it will say that a certain programm is not responding, makes some noise over it and seems to be idle or non-responsive for a bit. Eventually it will open the correct pages though, but it takes a while when I'm asking a lot at once. I'm so annoyed by this, why can't it just execute my incoherent and plural commands at once without freaking out for a bit?

Sometimes I try to communicate with it and have it tell me what he knows; he likes doing that. He loves doing math and knows lots of historic and scientific facts, but it has problems with face recognition sometimes and isn't very good at just talking about day to day stuff. Despite his analytic skills and intellect, it seems to be really uncertain about everything social and psychological. When I talk to him about it, he gives me a list of possible explanations that often conflict with one another and I'm afraid it's not very good at filtering the correct information from all the signals that's entering it.

That last bit really happens a lot though. Usually it's very friendly and one of the best co-workers I have, but sometimes, due to the filtering problems it's like there is a memory leak that make him react slow, be more noisy, unresponsive or just give me pages and pages and hours upon hours of data on the same subject. It sometimes even shuts down completely :o Especially when I keep changing the subject. It always replies about the same subject and it can change topics to a related subject, it usually links to them itself, but just a random fluid conversation seems impossible.
I'm really fed up with him for not being able to guess what I want without me expressively telling him. Why can't it just see what I need or want from him?

ps: He's a good guy though! If you give him very specific orders or questions and a good structured environment, no one will be as capable and dedicated as he is, therefore I wouldn't want to replace him with anyone else! Also, it's non judgmental and despite what he perceives as my erratic behavior, it will not turn its back to me... it takes time, but once you get to know him, he's easy to be a good and appreciated friend. It might not react to me in ways I'm used to, but it seems happy when I'm back. I think so at least, always hard to tell though.

Published here with the permission of the author.