I enjoyed the Five Spectrums article very much. I’ve heard it said autistics struggle with nuance, and can miss gestures and expressions obvious to the rest of us. If that’s true, that difficulty does not seem to extend to larger phenomena. I wish more people would appreciate the subtle nuances and shades of distinction that make up the spectrums we all occupy and navigate.

I had a friend in high school I suspect occupied some part of the autistic spectrum. At school he would never respond to my greetings, or participate in conversation, and always looked nervous, at best, and often terrified. Once at home, sometimes minutes after seeing him in person, he would call me, and we would speak, calmly, comfortably, and at length. When I asked him about his strange behavior he would claim he didn’t notice anything strange in his behavior. We still communicate, now by email, which he prefers even to telephone calls. He’s incredibly articulate, and a wonderful writer of short stories, and has blossomed in the internet age. I am so grateful for the opportunity the internet provides to meet and communicate with people who might otherwise be inaccessible to me. Your thoughts on the uncanny valley are the most interesting I’ve found, and I look forward to reading more of your insights.

Your perspective at any rate is refreshing; one reference point of course would be the Grandin/Sacks line about being “an anthropologist on Mars.” I think it’s only been with the advent of the internet that autistics have begun to conceive of ourselves as occupying the territory of a culture or subculture. I don’t know that the work of mapping out an uncanny valley within that territory has properly begun — but you’re right that it’s instructive to flip the valences and look at it from both perspectives.