Input: What field does Danny work in in Tennessee?

Context:
My Aspergers Child: COMMENTS & QUESTIONS [for Feb., 2017]
I emailed you a while back and you mentioned that I could email when I needed to. Thank you. I last wrote you in December that my son became involved in a dispute involving the local police. We have had 3 court dates. It keeps delaying due to not being able to come to an agreement. But the attorney, even though he was just vaguely familiar with Aspergers, has been very good with Craig. He has the compassion and excellence that is needed here. What started out very bad is turning into a good thing. It will probably take another 90 days or more.
But Craig is working hard. Too hard sometimes. He goes to therapy 3 times a week. Doing excellent. He's more focused and can calm down easier. He's got a lot on his plate but has support from his family. From his attorney. From therapy. And from his work.
He has been renting a room from a lady who has a son with ADHD. It is good for him. I'm a little worried though because since she smokes he wants to find his own place. With all the costs he has to balance it out financially. That is good. I can't help him more than I am which is good. He is stepping up and taking responsibility. He is listening much better.
He is going to have an evaluation today to get an accurate diagnosis. I understand that is a little difficult since he is an adult. Also the PTSD may cover it over. The attorney stated it would help to have the diagnosis.
Aware this is a long update, but thanks for reading. I am fighting much guilt still but I have a lot of peace now. My daughter and her 4 year old son also have Aspergers symptoms. So my life chapters may not close for a while. :-)
My name is Mac. I'm sure you're quite busy, so I'll get right to it I just wanted to pass on compliments on My Aspergers Child and your post, How to Implement the GFCF Diet: Tips for Parents of Autistic Children.
Me and my wife absolutely loved it!
I got a facebook message from him today begging to be able to come home saying he misses home and he will change. He says he will follow rules now. I stated to him the simple rules he has to follow which were - No weed in my house, or smoked in my house, coming home at curfew, going to school, no skipping, no drugs at school, and to drop the attitude of I am 17 I can do whatever I want.
I have made it very clear that if I see any drugs in my home I will be calling the police, as well as if I see signs of it being sold by him I will report him. (He has never had selling amounts in my house, ... I believe it's being kept at his "friends" which of course I have no proof of....I just know it is not here.
I know my battle is not over by a long shot, I am sure we will have more consequences and possibly another being kicked out, but I am going to think positive and hope that he learned some form of a valuable lesson here.
Thank you so much for the guidance, never in a million years did I ever think I'd be on this side, (the one needing the help, as I am the one who helps.)
I am going to go back to the start of the program like I said earlier and keep notes close by for reference.
Thanks for all you do, helping us all with ODD children/teens
I have a small company providing educational support services to a few families who have children with various disabilities in Ohio. One of the families has multiple adopted children of whom several have significant attachment disorders including RAD. As an experienced teacher and foster parent I have some experience in working with children who have extensive trauma backgrounds. However, I could use additional training. Also working with these children are two staff members with minimal background in attachment disorders who would also benefit from training primarily in behavior management. The primary caregiver to the children does a wonderful job managing their needs. In order to further develop team cohesion, I'm hoping to include her in any training as well.
Is it possible to schedule such a training session with you? If so, please let us know what will work for you including time, place, and cost. Thank you for your assistance.
I just listed to your tapes on dealing with an out of control, defiant teen. I'd like to ask your advice on a particular situation we have. Our 15 year old daughter is smoking pot almost every day at school. Because we had no way to control the situation, we told her, fine, go ahead and smoke weed. However, you will no longer receive the same support from us. You will not have your phone, lunch money to go off campus (she has an account at the school for the cafeteria she can use), and you will be grounded until you can pass a drug test. We will not be testing you except for when you tell us you are ready to be tested. She is now saying she's suicidal because she feels so isolated, yet she continues to smoke weed. In fact, she tried to sneak out last night but was foiled by our alarm system. For the particular drug test we have, I read it takes about 10 days of not smoking to pass the test. What would you do? Please advise.
I am having a problem with my 18 year old son, Danny, with high functioning autism. We finally had him diagnosed when he was 16 years old. I always knew something was going on with him but the doctors misdiagnosed him as bipolar. It's been 2 years now and he will not accept his diagnosis. He won't talk about it and when I try to bring it up he gets very angry. I've tried telling him that it's not a bad thing, that there's been many, many very successful people with Aspergers. He won't tell anyone and refuses to learn about managing life with it. He once shared with me that the other kids at school use it as an insult, like saying someone is so autistic when they do something they don't approve of. So he doesn't want anyone to know. He's turned down services that could help him. He has a girlfriend, going on 8 months. He won't tell her and they're having problems arguing a lot and I wonder if it would help for her to know.
I'm sad that he thinks it's a life sentence to something horrible instead of accepting, embracing it and learning about it more so he maybe can understand why he's struggling. I told him that he doesn't need to shout it out to the whole world but he won't even accept it himself.
I don't know how to help him with it and because he's almost 19 I have limited control now. It's made my life easier knowing what we're dealing with and I think his life would be easier is he accepted it.
Please help me help him.
I am a clinical psychologist in NYC who now has several (!!) children I see who have RAD. In 20 years of practice, I’d seen only one case. Now, I have at least three children with this. I have no training, per se, in working with this children though I know about setting structure, consistency, etc. I do a lot of work with parents about parenting. I work primarily within the school setting in a charter school whose mission is to educate children on the autism spectrum in a mainstream setting. We use Michelle Garcia Winner’s social thinking program with our ASD kids. I also work with gen ed kids in the school who are at-risk; the school is in the inner city from where the majority of our non-ASD kids live.
It would have been so much easier to mention to my adult son that I think (I know he does, but want to ease into the subject)
he has Asperger's when we were living together two years ago. He has since moved to Tennessee working in his field of interest
which is 3-D printing and software development. I am so happy for him that he has found his way into a job that he truly enjoys
even though he's socially isolated.
He's not diagnosed and does not know he has it. How I know is his classic symptoms being sensory issues (fabric feeling like sandpaper)
communication difficulties, meltdowns and much more. Throughout his childhood I just felt he was a bit different. Nothing major stood out and time
just passes, misdiagnosis of ADHD, low frustration, etc. We've talked about his ADHD numerous times (which I now know he doesn't have).
It's so much easier to communicate with him now that I know he has Asperger's. I keep it "slow and low" in talking, with long moments
of silence and then we connect. It's really too bad that Asperger's got a diagnostic code back in the 90's, yet all the so called doctors,
physiologist's, etc, didn't know how to diagnose it. Too bad.
There seems to be no one answer to "should I tell my adult son he has Asperger's" from a few specialists I asked. He is typical Asperger,
complicated, highly intelligent (high IQ), anxiety at times, socially isolated, hard to make friends. Not knowing how he will react is the hard part.
How will he be better off knowing he has it? Do I wait to tell him in person, or ease into it with him over Skype? He likes direct, honest, concrete communication.
Why is this so hard for me? Maybe because no one know's if he is going to be better off knowing or not. Do you know if people are better off
knowing? I try to get up the courage to just let him know, then I back down.
I have been searching the web looking for advice and came upon your site. I am trying to read blogs, websites, books, and articles to help guide me. I was so happy when you said that I could ask you a question. My husband and I are struggling with my 27 year old son who lives with us.
Kyle is the youngest of 4 sons. He is a college graduate but never could find the "right" job. He has always been quiet and never had a lot of friends. Two years ago, his girlfriend broke up with him. Kyle had an online gambling addiction and was using pot all the time. After the breakup, Kyle was very depressed and started using heroin and finally told my husband he was using. He is now seeing a psychiatrist who has him on suboxone and antidepressants. He is also seeing a psychologist weekly for counseling but it does not seem to be helping.
Last October,, Kyle lost his job, got drunk, and was agitated and came home , fighting with us, damaging our home and being verbally abusive. My other son , age 32, who also lives with us called the police and Kyle got arrested. He is currently in the family court system. He went through an anger management course and now is in substance abuse classes. Kyle continues to verbally abusive to me and blame me for everything. He says he "hates me "and calls me terrible names. At times, he pushes my husband and intimidates me. My husband and I are so upset. We just hired an attorney for him because since he has been going to these classes, he is getting more depressed and not getting better. Kyle continues to drink while taking his meds prescribed by the psychiatrist and then he has his "moods." My husband and I have met once with the psychiatrist just to give him background information when Kyle started with him.
At this point, we do not know what to do. We never thought at this stage of our life, we would be supporting and spending our retirement money on adult children. I do not know why Kyle hates me, I could not have been a better mom. My husband and I have no life and just do not know what it the right path we should take. Kyle does not want anything to do with us. He spends all his time in his room playing football online.We have tried tough love versus caring and love and understanding. Do you have any advice for me?
This whole ODD and ADHD is killing me as a parent. I work in the field of adult psych and addictions so I am well educated. I have been dealing with my teen being like this for almost 3 years and I totally lost my cool today with my 17-year-old son to the point I told him he is out of the house. He can never simple rules, comes and goes as he pleases sometimes doesn't come home, just recently back in school from several suspension for drug related... I am just so exhausted. He has made me hate life, hate being a parent and sometimes I just feel like not even being here. I bought your program in hopes to it would help, I am at week three and I feel things are getting worse... what am I doing wrong??
My partner hasn't been diagnosed yet but I know he has aspergers ..day to day is a struggle . I feel I'm going crazy with how he makes me feel.Feel let down constantly. He lies alot but I've been told they can't but I know he does.I just feel trapped and unloved.We have a 4yr old daughter together and my main worry with how he is that it will effect our daughter ; (his skills as a parent are so weak.He can't disapline at all.Feel so alone .he hides it well too.I just wondered if things will get worse? He's angry so quick in arguments.Scares me etc.I can't leave as he's the main bread winner and our daughter loves him to bits.Don't know why I'm writing this..Sorry if I'm going on and not making sense :(
I wanted to let you know about a research opportunity for children, teens, and young adults with autism. I am studying the effects of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, and psychotherapy on helping people with autism develop subjective awareness of others.
I am writing you to see if this might help someone in your practice, or to see if you might know of someone with autism who may benefit from participating in this study. The requirements of the study will be:
1. A participant should be between 7-21 years of age and have a diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder.
2. The participant should enroll in an approved Jiu Jitsu Academy and attend at least two sessions a week for a period of six months.
3. The participant should enroll in social skills groups, provided by my office or be in a steady psychotherapeutic relationship in your office, at least once a week, or minimally two to three times a month.
4. The participant will be given a SRS (Social Responsiveness Scale) test at the beginning of the study, at three months, and again at six months.
If you know of anyone who might benefit from this novel approach to helping to develop social awareness in autism, please do not hesitate to contact me for further information.
I have a 10 year old daughter who has outbursts with prolonged crying almost like tantrums that 2 year olds have when they cannot express themselves.
I had her in therapy from age 6-8 years old for the same thing but I feel that the sessions didn't really help much.
She has severe sensitivities to light, sound, vibration, frequencies which trigger irritability and crying.
We changed her diet and tried getting her involved with activities but she is anti-social and prefers reading than being social. She is terrified of change even in daily routine (even that will trigger prolonged crying).
It frustrates me because I don't know what else to do with her behavior.
I've tried acupuncture (she refused at the first session); she refuses massage too.
She is an honor-roll student at school and has very minimal issues at school but if she has had a bad day it does result in a tantrum or crying and defiance.
How can I get her tested for Asperger's Syndrome?
Last night our 24 year old son with Aspergers told his dad and I that he is pulling out of the 4 college classes that he recetnly enrolled in because he has not been attending class or turning in his assignments. He paid $2800 (his own money) for tuition and I reminded him of this when he told us but it did not seem to bother him.
This is the 3rd time he has started college courses and has not completed them. (He also took some concurrent college classes while he was in high school that he failed). This is a son who basically had a 4.0 grade point average through 10th grade and got a 34 on the ACT the first time he took it.
With the news that he was once again not sticking with college courses I did not sleep well. When I got up this mornning I began looking online for help in how to deal with his situation. I found your "Launching Adult Children With Aspergers" and purchased it. Most of what is included are things we have done or did with our son throughout his life. I was hoping for more help so I am emailing you now in hopes of more specific ideas.
We noticed some things with our son, Taylor, as a yound child but as we had not heard of Aspergers at that time we just did what we thought would help him. As a toddler and a child at pre-school he generally went off on his own to play. When I talked to his pre-school teacher about my concerns (that I was worried he would end up a hermit) she said she did not see him being a loner and that he seemed to interact fine with others in many situations. We worked with him on making eye contact when talking with others. We explained different emotions in people's faces and mannerisms to help him know how to interact with others. We discussed the fact that people would say things that did not mean what they souneded like - such as "I'm so hungry I could eat a horse". As we did these things he worked hard to better understand communication with others.
During his 4th grade year I had a teacher from the gifted program ask me if I had ever heard of Aspergers. I told her that I had not heard of it. She proceeded to read me some of the charateristics and so many of them described my son. So we had him tested by the school district during the summer between 4th and 5th grade and they did find that he had Aspergers but that he was high functioning. We then set him up with and EIP which stayed with him until his sophomore year. We pulled him from it at that time because we had moved and the new district was requiring him to take one class a day that was a study class. This reduced the number of required classes he could take and he was doing fine with his studies at the time.
It was during the 2nd half of his Junior year that we noticed some of his grades going down. Then during his Senior year is when he started skipping classes and not doing assignments. We had not realized it before then but we soon became aware that he was addicted to gaming. He would go to the library or somewhere else on campus and play games on the computer rather than go to class. It was also at this time that he began lying about his actions (so as not to get in trouble).
Based on his grades and his ACT score he received offers from colleges for full tuition scholarships. He chose the college where he had taken concurrent classes during his high school years. But he proceeded to skip class and not turn in assignments so he lost his scholarship and quit attending college. During this time he was only able to find employment through an employment agency where he was mostly sent to manuel labor type jobs (which is not something he enjoys but he did it anyway). It was during this time that at one place had gone to on numerous occasions he was told if he came late one more time they would tell the emplyment agency they did not want him to come there anymore. (This seemed to make an impression on him because he has continued to be reliable and responsbile at his places of employment).
At 19 1/2 he left to serve a 2 year full-time mission for our church. He completed his mission successfully. (I don't think it was without some struggle, stress and depression, but he was able to pick himself up and move on from those times).
When he came home he started working for the employment agency again but began looking for employment elsewhere. He got a job at a local Chick Fil-A where he has worked for 3 years. He started college again shortly after he came home but as before it was short lived. He did finish out the semester but failed most of the classes due to his skipping class and not turning in assignments. When he skipped class he would usually sleep in his car.
Taylor's life consists of working (where to the best of our knowledge) he does well, he is reliable and his employer likes him. When he comes home from work he either sleeps or plays video games or other games - such as kakuro. He spendes most of his time in the basement where his bedroom is and this is where he games. Taylor owns his own car, bought his own laptop and very rarely spends money. He pays us $200 /month to still live at home, unloads the dishwasher on a regular basis and does the weekly garbage. However, his room is a mess and he only cleans his bathroom when I tell him he needs to clean it.
Taylor used to read quite a bit and loved to learn. It has just been in his adult years that he has not read as much - I think because of his gaming addiction. Taylor goes to church on a regular basis but sleeps through the main meeting. In Sunday class room settings he stays awake - I think because he is able to particpate in discussions.
Taylor has only had 2 real friends since entering Junior High school. And as of now he only keeps in contact with one of them who still lives in Georgia. We have lived in Utah since the summer of 2007 and he has never had a friend to do things with since we have lived here. He has two younger siblings, a brother 22 and a sister 20. They love Taylor and spend time with him when they are home. They are both at college and doing well.
Throughout Taylor's school years he has seen a counsleor on a fairly regular basis. One summer during junior high he attended a weekly class where he interacted with other kids with Aspergers. We did see a lot of change in him from this group. After he returned from his mission he went to see a counselor for a short period - this counselor tried to help him with some social skills. His dad and I went with him the first 3 or 4 times but we found out that after we quit going with him he only went a few more times and then scheduled appointments but did not show a couple of the times. We only found this out when a bill came for a "no show" appointment.
I don't know if this is too much information but were are in dire need of help for him. In the information that we purchased from you you mentioned that you do coaching for Aspergers adults. I don't know if you can help us but I thought I would check with you just in case.
Alas I think I have found your information too late to save my marriage but I am hoping to save myself.
I am currently going through a very very painful separation after a 27 year relationship with my husband whom I am convinced has aspergers syndrome. It is a long and painful story and I am desperately trying to process it all alongside dealing with a very conflictual separation. My partner is angry non communicative and totally dismissive of me and our long shared history.
He walked out last year after I discovered he had been visiting massage parlours and developed a relationship with an illegal Chinese escourt whom he subsequently moved in with. He had been seeing this woman behind my back for over 18 months. The pain of all this indescribable and his dismissal of my pain and very existence beyond belief.
Leading up to this I had been battling anxiety and depression which my husband found very hard to cope with.
Over the years of our relationship I knew something was off but I just could not put my finger on it. I often felt a complete lack of validation and empathy. Communication was also difficult as my husband was defensive and unwilling to look at issues in our marriage.
Please Mark could you help me validate some of this pain and try and make dense of 27 years of my life without drowning in fear guilt and despair about my future.
Thank you for listening and your site.
I have had problems with drunkenness, being late for school, not handing in school work, buying pot from a dealer etc. I chose to focus on the drinking and did the grounding then (grounding happened 3 times). I also stopped sleep overs at friends 100%. I have stopped handing out money for no reason or even buying treats like chocolate.
I did lose it one evening (and didn't do the poker face) when I was trying to unplug the internet at midnight on a school night (she’s always late for school so I am trying to get her to sleep at a reasonable hour). I was physically stopped and pushed around so I slapped my daughter (it was not hard). This ended up with her saying she didn’t want to come home (the next day after school). By this stage, I also had enough and didn’t go get her. I thought I am not begging. You will run out of money soon. It was quite a relief to have some peace. Daughter’s Dad was in town (from another country) and called a family meeting with the counsellor. To cut a long story short, daughter and her counsellor put it on the table that daughter wants to go live somewhere else (with her friends family) because of the stress at home with me (we live on our own) (i.e. stricter rules and her bucking up against it).
I didn’t really want this but made a compromise that daughter would go there Tues morning – Friday afternoon as the friend is an A student whereas my daughter is failing. They do the same subjects. I made the decision at the end of the day based on what is good for me – some time away from the daughter. I also thought of your book when the child went to live with the grandparents – daughter will dig her own hole over at the friend’s house. They have a week day no going out policy which made me think it is OK. I went and discussed with them the problems experienced (drinking, pot, late nights, not handing in work)
I am also trying to follow the let go of school thing per your book. I find it really difficult to remain calm when I can see daughter on her phone and watching series (when I have her on the weekends) when I know there are projects due. I hired her a private tutor once a week for help with a subject. The tutor has just fired my daughter for not handing in work and being not committed. It’s not the first time private tutoring has not been appreciated. The school give me a report back on a Friday as to whether everything is handed in. The deal is – if the work is not handed in – no pocket money and no Friday night out). Her school is a "progressive" school and there are no repercussions for her being late or not handing in work. I would change schools if I could but there are only 8 months left of school (she turns 18 in August).
We have just completed the first week and beginning week two of your material. We are agreeing with your take and see our son and ourselves in most of what you are saying. Prior to finding your material and starting your program we had been having extreme out of control behaviors and had to call the police because he was breaking things in our house and pushed my husband. This happened three weeks ago. After that incident we took away privileges ie. PS4, phone (which had already been taken for a few days), and friends. So, last week while doing your program he already didn’t have privileges and has continued with poor behavior – name calling, throwing things, slamming doors. We are not sure when to give privileges back. He has been given the privilege of playing with friends on occasion. His 13th birthday is tomorrow. This past weekend, for his birthday my husband and he went boar hunting. Of course we debated about it but decided to go ahead since it was his bday. We are cooking some of the meet on the grill tomorrow night for his bday and inviting a couple of his friends over for a cookout. No more gifts other than cards and balloons. We are wondering if we should go ahead and give him his privileges back and not sure how to do it. Last Friday morning we attempted to talk giving him a date to return privileges and that conversation ended with him getting angry but he gathered from our conversation that he is getting his stuff back on his bday. We are starting week 2 assignments today but not sure how to handle what was already in place. Of course, we aren’t seeing the respect and responsibility we are looking for but realize it has been a long time. We were wanting him to pay for his phone and thought it might be a good time to introduce that idea. Allowing him to earn his phone. We expect that he will be angry with this idea and not sure how to implement.
My son and myself are interested in a inpatient Aspergers program. We line in Calif which is preferable. My son is very high functioning and was diagnosed dry late. He was eight years old. He has never been in or attended a full day of class. Partially due to depression,anxiety, and trouble with his ADHD also his aversion and being bullied and of course his Aspergers. He will not attend his freshmen year due to surgery on both Achilles' tendons from walking on his toes. With physical therapy he should be ready by his sophomore year! We all feel he needs in patient therapy to give him the tools on how to work with his issues in a structured setting and a place that will give him tools for the rest of his life.
In my utter desperation to find a way to get some help for my daughter's increasingly challenging behaviour I trawled the internet to see if I could find some strategies that would provide specific methods on dealing with teenagers with Asperger's syndrome. When I came across your website, I couldn't believe that every statement you made was exactly what I have been going through with my daughter. She has just turned 14 last week, and was diagnosed with Asperger's/ Autism Spectrum Disorder 15 months ago. I have already been seeing a child psychologist for the past five months, however the methods she has been advising have not been very effective.
Our main difficulty with our daughter is her overwhelming obsession to use her cell phone (and to a lesser extent her laptop) constantly. Without any restriction, she will be on it every minute of the day, and will be awake until the early hours every day. We have tried to incorporate her input around rules as to when she has to give in her phone, but she is unwilling to compromise on a time that she should give it to us, believing that she should have unlimited use. I believe she is unable to do any adequate study or homework, as she is constantly having to look at the phone. We have tried to put rules in place that she has to give in her phone and laptop on school nights at 22:15. If she is able to do this then she is given rewards, and if she doesn't then she knows that there will be consequences. The consequence has been restricted use the following day. However, this is usually where we fail, because taking her phone away from her results in tantrums, screaming, and even threatening to harm herself. This behaviour is relentless to the point where the whole family becomes deeply distressed, and inevitably results in her getting the phone back.
This obsession is affecting her schoolwork, and more severely her eyesight. She has become very shortsighted, and her eyesight continues to deteriorate as a result of holding the phone or laptop very close, and mostly in the dark without any lights on. My husband and I have a constant battle on our hands daily, in all areas of discipline with our daughter, but our main concern is that we have been unable to find a way to minimise this obsessive behaviour centred around her phone and laptop. Please can you provide some strategies that can help us specifically with this problem.
First of all, I thank you for developing this program and I am only at the first stage of assignment 1. I have loads of books I have bought, attended psychiatrists for my son and myself, family therapy, occupational therapy, begged and prayed for change but have been dealing with behavioural issues for so long I am definitely exhausted and resentful.
I am a mum to a 15 yr old boy with ASD, dyslexia, OCD and ODD. Sorry to focus on the labels but just to give you an idea of what I am dealing with. I also have a 13 yr old son whom finds his brother’s behaviours difficult, embarassing and challenging. My husband whom is not in great health ( he had a cerebral aneurysm clamped two years ago and has two further aneurysms that are inoperable so endures fatigue, headaches and stress). We have however a pet cat that is very social and a calming influence in the home! I was fortunate enough to have loving parents but I lost both my mum and dad in 2008 and 2015. My inlaws are elderly and quite directly say they are too old to help us so it feels we are alone in dealing with the issues we have.
I am desperate for change as the household is one of stress and anger and I feel all the control lies in my son Patrick’s hands. I am hopeful your programme can make life better for all of us but I wonder if it is too early to ask you two questions?
The first lies with what to do when Patrick goes into my other son Brendan’s room and will either turn on a light when he is sleeping, yell when he is on his phone or create some disturbance. He will not leave the room when asked to do so and the situation always escalates into yelling and Brendan attempting to physically remove him. This happens regularly and always ends badly with doors slamming, my husband being woken and myself in tears feeling the lack of control and also I admit I seem to think “Why me?” which rationally I know is of no help.
The second problem is leaving the house for school. Patrick refuses personal hygiene (either morning or night) and any request to even brush his teeth is fraught with swearing and abuse. If I can get him to shower, he will watch the water roll down the drain and turn up the water really high temp (mu husband has had to turn down the thermostat on the hot water service) without so much as getting wet. My husband leaves for work at 6am but I leave at 745 to work as a nurse in a busy outpatients department in the Alfred Hospital (Melbourne). My work is my sanity as it is a paid break from home but most days I am late which is causing considerable stress and anxiety not to mention my responsibility to do my job. Patrick simply refuses to leave the house and as much as I am tempted to just walk out and leave I know the house would be left unlocked and wonder if Patrick would even attend school. The time I need to leave is not negotiable but Patrick uses this to his advantage and seems to delight in stressing me out and subsequently speeding to work in a frazzled mess.
The interesting and frustrating element in all of this is that although he is socially isolated at school (he has no friends) and academically challenged his behaviour at school is not a problem. He is quiet and his teachers report he does his best and is compliant and well mannered. It is like a Jekyll and Hyde situation where another side of him at home is so angry and abusive yet at school this behaviour does not happen.
I’m Jackie, I now work primarily as a freelance tech writer, after starting my career in software development and moving on to teach IT to young adults at a variety of colleges and schools.
My freelance work is pretty varied and looks at many aspects of the computer industry as a whole, and I’ve just recently completed a piece which gives help and advice to anyone wanting to become a game designer, which you can read here: http://www.gamedesigning.org/become-a-game-designer/. It highlights the hard work and effort it takes to get into such a role, and also how you can further your career and continue to learn and improve as you go. I hope you’ll agree it shows that starting work in the industry takes dedication and skill and that becoming a game designer isn’t just a fly-by-night job!
If you’d be interested in sharing a quick mention of my work on your blog that would be really wonderful and I’d appreciate the chance to get my work out there to a wider audience. Alternatively, I’d be happy to write a short blurb or paragraph or two (or a longer piece - just let me know) highlighting the key points because I think some of your readers might get a lot of value from it.
My son just turned 15 and is a freshman in high school. Although this is his first year in a general ed environment, he is struggling with behaviors in school. He has meltdowns and does not express why he would have them until much later. Once we all know what caused it, the school will accommodate him and try to "change up" things so as not to cause his meltdown. Once that is resolved, another issue comes up and causes him to melt down. He is a high functioning and academically does well, when he wants to do the work. We battle at home over homework. He does not care how it is done, as long as he hands it in. He thinks failing a test is ok, at least he took the test. Homework is never on his mind when he gets home from school. If I never prompt him, he would never open is backpack. He can be aggressive but is never intentionally trying to hurt anyone. He may push over a chair in school, but it is not directed at anyone. We know how that in itself could hurt someone who gets hit by it though. He is defiant in that he only wants to do what interests him. He does not go out by himself (still immature), or abuse alcohol or drugs and never curses. He is a very funny kid and very talented. His main problems are task avoidance and seeking attention. He can be disrespectful to adults in that he is "cheeky" with them, trying to be funny or cute. And he has no "filters".
I’ve just finished reading your Living with an Aspergers Partner ebook. I found it so informative, thank you.
You offered some personal advise, and i wanted to run a situation past you and seek your input as to a strategy for what to do next.
I’ve been seeing a guy for about 7 months now who I believe has Aspergers. I came to this conclusion months ago and I don’t think he realizes, (or acknowledges) although he is aware he has some traits.
He’s highly intelligent and successful, a pattern seeker, has a tendency to focus on the project to hand to the total exclusion of all else for as long sit takes (work or home) socially awkward (has learned coping strategies), sensitive to loud noise, high anxiety with control strategies, black and white thinking etc. He’s currently not working and I’ve seen a slow withdrawal over the last 6 weeks, including the need to ‘escape’ and leave a situation at least once.
He also has a bipolar ex overseas who has primary custody one daughter where there has been ongoing patterns of drama which has recently increased.
Over the past couple of months (since stopping work and drama increase) I’ve gone from being ‘wonderful’ in his eyes to him now being sorry and not having the ‘urge’ to spend close/intimate time with me and offering friendship. Since he shared that with me in a message he’s stonewalled and has retreated to the safety of minimal messages and talks about not knowing what best to say and not being able to find the right words somehow.
He’s a good kind man who I feel is struggling. I’m concerned about his anxiety and possibly the risk of depression. I’m fairly resilient and whilst i’m disappointed he doesn’t want to pursue a relationship with me, i’m concerned for him and his well being. One of his very few close friends is also just leaving the country to live overseas.
The strategy I’ve used so far is simply to back off and give him space. I’ve asked to take him up on an original offer he made to talk but haven’t pushed it. I also haven’t been aggressive or accusatory in the few messages i’ve sent.
Any advise you could give would be greatly appreciated,
Carli who is 10 years old and has had behavioral issues her whole life. The other night she came home very upset after having a conflict with a friend. She was at her friend's house and her and her friend wanted to get on the computer and the older sister was using it. Carli made up a story that someone was at the door to get the older sister off the computer. Her friend didn't understand that she was making up a story to get the sister off the computer. She got excited that someone was at the door and ran downstairs to answer the door. In the process of getting the door, she fell and yelled at Carli. Carli became extremely upset. She was able to control her feelings at her friend's house, but when she came home, she proceeded to cry extremely loudly for over an hour. Her dad spent most of that time with her, talking to her and trying to calm her down. After an hour, I asked him if he could please tell her to be more quiet because the other members of the household were trying to go to sleep.
My question is....how do I as the girlfriend, handle this? He did not like that I asked her to be quiet. We have a rule that if she is having bad behavior, and can't calm down in 5 minutes, he takes her out of the house because her yelling doesn't stop for a long time and is very upsetting to everyone in the household. I would like to ask him to do this with this kind of situation as well. Is this a reasonable request? His thought was that she shouldn't be made to calm down, because everyone handles being upset in a different way. But, she was literally sobbing and wailing very loudly.
My other question is should she have been told that if she wouldn't have lied, this wouldn't have happened? She has a history of lying and of not accepting responsibility for her actions. My boyfriend became very upset with me when I brought this up. He was being very sympathetic and understanding to her. I feel like he was giving her negative attention, and being an over indulgent parent by not putting his foot gown and saying, "you can't carry on like this, even though you are upset". Please let me know how we can handle these situations better.
I am contacting you for help with adult AS. I am taking initiative to pre screen potential therapists to help my current boyfriend get therapy and help with Adult AS.
He has seen many therapists, but it seems like they aren’t really helping him with his problems. They don’t seem to understand how his (undiagnosed) AS would affect therapy approaches. For example, he may not share enough in therapy session and I’m assuming an AS therapist would recognize that is part of the AS and employ strategies to get information from him that helps with treatment. Sometime he tunes out when he is processing something heavy or that he doesn’t want to hear necessarily, or he gets distracted and I’m hoping an As therapist would recognize that and get that he may need repeated something for example, if this is happening.
He is currently suffering from depression that appears clinical in nature as well as reoccurring negative thoughts about something specific that has been worrying him about our relationship. Today he told me these reoccurring thoughts happen during all waking hours unless he watches TV, he never gets a break from them and they make him feel like he is going crazy. As his girlfriend, I am extremely concerned that he cannot get relief from these thoughts and that the therapists he is seeing are unable to help him with his problems. Therefore, I am taking initiative to try and help him find better therapy options, because I want to see him someone who can better help him get to the bottom of things and help him with the challenges he is facing. He really needs an advocate that will help him go deep to figure things out and not just assume therapies are working well, without seeing changes or getting supporting feedback from him in that regard.
Here are some questions I am trying to ask in advance to find the right people to help us with this. As you may know, insurance for these therapies are not often available. We don’t have a lot of money to go from therapist to therapist to find the right person and are hoping prescreening will help.
I recently downloaded your e-book and listened to your talks and your information is by far the most helpful I have been able to find to date. It's very accurately describes my situation as an NT wife married to a very probable AS husband. I think you for taking the time to write this and sharing your insights as well as the experiences of many of your clients. It has really helped me understand the last 32 years of our marriage and get a grasp on how to move forward.
One area that is of primary concern to me, that I did not see addressed, is stimming. I believe that is the behavior my husband is showing through constant vocal singing, repetition of words, shouting out, as well as slapping himself in the chest and general nervous activity. It is very loud and disruptive to our household and it is often a relief when he is not at home. I think there may be a level of Tourette's syndrome as well.
I did some searches on the Internet and could not find anything that really describes his behavior. Most of what I found was flapping or children's behavior. I understand that it is a release of nervous tension but I am really trying to find some strategies to help him stop this behavior as it is extremely frustrating and builds my resentment in dealing with it daily. A lot of it is embarrassing as well and sounds childish to me.
He usually does this when close family members are around and will reign himself in if he is around other people besides us. When we are home it is constant. He also has a lot of anger, mostly at himself, and blows up at unimportant things, it is as if he has a ton of negative energy inside him that need to get out and stimming is one outlet.
I will try to build my acceptance of it, but I also would just like him to stop especially the loudest and most annoying portions. Would you have any resources you could point me to?

Answer: 3-D printing and software development.


Input: Who is the program chair of this conference?

Context:
HOFFMAN: I'm delighted to introduce the chair of the last session, Mara Liasson from the National Public Radio. Mara is Congressional correspondent for NPR, and covers activities in Congress in D.C. Right now, this week, she has been covering the tax bill, which people currently are going at hot and heavy. She took time off from her busy schedule to come here to help us sort out some of these key issues for today, and more importantly, for what happens in the next decade and beyond. I'll turn it over to Mara to get the panel going.
LIASSON: Thank you very much. I am probably the only person here who has absolutely no background in technology. Anyway, I am the only one who does not understand what the panelists are going to be talking about (laughter), and although they have already told me that they do not appreciate people who think that that's a great quality and look down on people who are technical, and I certainly do not, I will reserve the right to insist that they all talk in terms that people like me can understand, since there is more of me out there than you, although not in this room today. (laughter) What we are going to do is introduce each panelist, and each one will make a short three- to five-minute presentation. Then my instructions say that we are going to have a McLaughlin Group discussion, which I guess means lots of yelling and screaming and talking at once. (laughter) After that's over, about 4:10, we'll open up the panel for questions from the audience.
To my left is Peter Denning, who is Chairman of the Computer Science Department at George Mason University and also the associate dean for computing. He is the program chair of this conference, has also served as the president of ACM, and he is currently the editor of Communications.
Simon Davies, to my right, also wears blue suits, but you can tell him from Mitch, because he wears a white hat. (laughter) He is from Sydney, Australia, and is the Director General of Privacy International, which is an international network of privacy advocates. He is also an author, a journalist, and radio commentator.
To his right is Roland Homet. He is an information policy writer and thinker who recently opened his own public policy writing firm here in Washington -- it's called Executive Ink, not Inc., as it is written in your programs, so you can scratch that out.
Esther Dyson, at the end of the panel, is among the most respected commentators on developing technology trends in the personal computer business. She publishes two newsletters, Release 1.0 and Rel-EAST. She has also been one of the driving forces promoting East-West relations through computer networks. She is a board member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation as well.
I'll ask Peter to start.
P. DENNING: Thank you. Starting around 1850, people of many countries looked to their governments to regulate commerce, erase inequities, and build societies of better human beings. For over a hundred years, many people, from peasants to intellectuals, had faith that strong governments would bring them a better life. This faith was part of the clearing in which Communist governments flourished; although the United States took an anti-Communist stand, the same faith fostered a strong government that promised salvation by great national programs including Social Security, welfare, food stamps, the War on Poverty, and the Great Society. This faith is now shattered. People no longer trust that powerful government can deliver a better life.
The dramatic collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union illustrates this, as does the growing disillusionment of the American people for federal, state, and local governments. The poor track record of government is not the only reason for the shift. Information technology has accelerated the process. Communications that took weeks in the last century now take fractions of a second. Business success depends on what happens around the globe, not only on local conditions. Radio, TV, fax, and now E-mail are common worldwide, so much so that not even a powerful government can control what information its citizens have. Because the space of opportunity for people to engage in transactions with each other has been so enormously enlarged during the past decade, faith in marketplace democracies is on the rise worldwide; correspondingly faith in central management mechanisms is on the decline. This shift has brought with it a shift of the power of institutions. Government institutions tend to try to hold onto their power by regulatory coercion to enforce the old ways. This can produce big tensions and even promote breakage.
Nowhere can this be seen more clearly than in the cryptographic area which we have just been talking about in the previous hour. This technology, cryptography, produces mechanisms for digital signatures, authentication, electronic money, certificates, and private communication -- all offering a way for standard business practices now based on paper to be shifted into the electronic media. The success of worldwide enterprises depends on this shift being completed rapidly and effectively. As more people realize this, the momentum for incorporating cryptographic technology into the information infrastructure is accelerating.
In this country, the National Security Agency has long been given the authority to regulate cryptography. This authority was granted in another time when the success of the country depended upon the ability of its government to gather intelligence and communicate in secret. These premises made sense in a world where most of the power resided in governments, but the world is changing. Much economic power is now accumulating in large apolitical transnational corporations. These corporations place their own concerns and strategies ahead of those of governments of the countries in which they do business. Like governments, they are interested in gathering intelligence about competitors and in conducting business in private. Unlike governments, they want open access to the technologies of authentication, electronic money, digital signatures, and certificates that will allow them to conduct business transactions across the network. So it is no longer true that national power and national security are increased when government has the sole right to gather intelligence and encipher communications. Now the strength of a country depends not only on its government, but also on its corporations. The old premises have fallen away in the new reality, but the old policy remains. It's time to rethink the policy, before tensions between a threatened government and corporations produce significant social tension and perhaps breakage.
Well, digital media -- computer-based communications -- are the printing press of the 21st century, and as the printing press transformed society, created the modern individual, gave rise to the basis of the democratic state and to the notion of individual rights, I suspect that we will see a similar, radical transformation of the very constitution of global society in the next century, facilitated by this enabling technology. I would be the last person to try to sketch out the details, or tell you what the issues are going to be, but I want to share with you some feelings about what is really going to matter, as we go about this -- and I'll start with something about myself.
You see a guy wearing a suit; most of you know I have a lot of money -- I'm a successful businessman. God knows what images propagate around the media and settle in people's minds, but I've always seen myself, and felt myself to the core of my being, as an outsider, every bit as much as a self-proclaimed outsider, as Tom Jennings -- who spoke so eloquently about this at the Pioneer awards* yesterday -- was. *The Electronic Freedom Foundation presented its first awards at a related, adjacent reception which was not formally a part of the conference.
I think we are all outsiders; we are all different, all unique. We're not the same. We share an underlying common humanity, but we should not be asked to subjugate ourselves to some form of mass society that causes us each to become indistinguishable from one another. I believe that computer- based communications technology is an enabling technology to liberate individuals and to free us from the oppressive influence of large institutions, whether those are public or private. And I am talking about an economic restructuring that results in a much more decentralized society, and social restructuring in an affirmation of the simple right to be left alone. I think Cyberspace is good for individuals, and I think that's important. I also think that the flip side of the coin, the creation of community, which we so sorely lack in this country today, can be facilitated through these technologies.
I have experienced that for myself, as many of you have on your various computer networks on conferencing systems like the WELL. It is enormously liberating to overcome the artificial boundaries of space and time. We are prisoners of geography in the physical world, and our communities are largely a product of who we can see face to face each day, even though our real comrades and colleagues may be scattered all over the world and our interests -- whether they are hobbies or political interests or religious interests, whatever they might be -- can be facilitated if we are able to get in touch with, to form bonds with, to exchange views and ideas with other kindred spirits. And I believe this technology is an enabling technology for the formation of community. My hope is that we will have the wisdom to create policies which enable individuals to flourish free from the chains of mass society, and which enable voluntary communities of people, individuals, groups who come together to be with each other and to work together. I hope both of those become possible.
DAVIES: I feel very warmed by the various visions of the future that have come out of this conference, but I am a cynic, and cynicism is good, because it adds fiber. (laughter) How nice the world would be if everyone was like Mitch, but they're not, because the future is in the hands of ruthless, greedy little men.
I want to paint the vision of the future that I have, and I hope it's not too depressing because there is a future, a good future... possibly. I agree, as many of you do, that the future is going to be like some giant informational Yggdrasil* *Reference from Old Norse mythology -- the Yggdrasil was a giant ash tree whose roots held together the universe.. We'll all be part of interconnectivity, the likes of which we can scarcely imagine right now. I imagine it will be like an organism where we're independent and interdependent, and so it's like a two-edged sword. That's all very nice, and we can see that we form part of that new community. But, I see a world with 15 billion beings scrambling for life, where four-fifths of the world lives on half a liter of water a day, where people grow up to see their children dying, where new political frontiers are destroying freedoms and the democracy that we have developed over the last two centuries. I see a world where there is very little hope for nearly everybody on the planet, except for the elite -- that's us -- except for those of us who are plugged into the informational Yggdrasil.
What I see is that 14 of those 15 billion people are a lot of pissed-off people who have their eyes set on what they see, not as a wonderful informational community, but as the beast. And they see that that is where the resources are, and that's where the opportunities are, and that's where the political power is. I can't see a future for us in a world where ultimately the great demon becomes information. It might be good for us, but for the disaffected four-fifths of the world, information is going to be something which, frankly, we can do without, because in a world with almost no resources left, surely information is selfishness.
HOMET: Thank you. I'm grateful to the organizers for including me in these proceedings -- they are reminiscent for me of some information policy conferences that I organized 15 to 20 years ago for the Aspen Institute. The particulars have certainly changed, but the dynamics remain much the same. For me, these are well-represented by Peter Denning's image of a changeable clearing in the woods. At any given time, as I see it, the clearing is an acceptable standoff between the forces of modernization and of traditional culture, between freedom and discipline, between structure and spontaneity. Now we voice these as opposites, but in fact, they need each other. It is the creative tension between technological innovation and established order that allows society to hold together and progress to take place. Take away freedom and order will be overthrown -- witness the Soviet Union. Take away tradition, and modernization will be crushed -- witness Iran. The clearing must be respected and it must move. Just as Benjamin Cardozo of the U.S. Supreme Court said 65 years ago, the genius of the American system is its penchant for ordered liberty. When both halves of the equation work against each other and together in Hegelian terms, the clearing that they produce is, at any given time, a prevailing hypothesis, which is challenged by a new antithesis. Together they can produce a fresh synthesis. And all that is very familiar. What is new and trying is the sweep and pace of innovation today, plus -- and this is what we sometimes forget -- the political volatility of the value systems that this can induce. If you doubt that, consider the Buchanan campaign and what's been going on with the Endowment for the Arts and public broadcasting. These are signs of people running scared, and they can cause damage.
So the answer for the 21st century is to proceed under power, but with restraint, to practice what Mitch Kapor in another connection called toleration for opposing forces and perspectives. We need each other to keep the enterprise together and on course. For computer practitioners represented in this room, this means restraint from provoking unnecessary and damaging social backlash. A good example might be New York telcos offering free per-call and per-line blocking with this caller identification service. For regulators and law enforcers, restraint means asking, "Do you know enough to freeze emerging conduct in a particular form or pattern?" I was very taken by the role reversal exercise organized by Michael Gibbons on Wednesday night. It led me to wonder what might have happened to the government's wiretapping and encryption proposals had they been subjected to a comparable advanced exercise before introduction.
Sixteen years ago in Aspen, Colorado, I convened a gathering of federal policymakers and invited them to consider a suggested matrix of policy values and processes in the information society. The first two of those values -- it will not surprise you to know -- were freedom of discourse and individual privacy. But there were more: freedom of economic choice is one; the general welfare another; popular sovereignty, worth pausing on, I described as avoiding concentrations of economic and political power in any sector of industry or government that impinge unduly on the freedoms or welfare of the citizenry. And then there is progress, social progress, the fostering, I said, of market incentives and opportunities for technological and service innovations and for widened consumer choice among technologies and services. Now obviously if you give just a moment's thought to it, you will recognize, as I think we have in this conference, that these values can collide with each other at key points, and therefore accommodations must be made. For that we need processes of accommodation. I also suggested some of those. After you identify the relevant values and goals, you then should ask yourself about the necessity and the appropriateness of having government make any decision on the matter. And this has to do with such things like the adequacy of decision-making standards, the availability of adequate information, and the adequacy of personnel resources to deal with it. Then you get into dividing up the possible roles of the various elements of government -- the regulatory agencies, the Executive Branch, the Judiciary, and the Congress. It doesn't stop there, because you need to ask about international implications, which we have done some of here. And federal/state implications -- very often allowing the state to make a stab at social ordering in the first instance is, as Justice Brandeis often said, the best way, through the social laboratory technique, to try out what is the right answer, without endangering the whole society. And as we have heard today, we need also to think about the availability of non-coercive instruments of accommodation, like a federal data protection board.
DYSON: I want to just say one thing about this business of crypto technology -- it is a very simple sentence, and everyone seems to slip slightly by it; that is, if you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns. Crypto technology is fundamentally a defensive weapon. It may protect murderers and thieves, but it is not a weapon that murders, kills, does anything bad; and so it is a very different kettle of fish from any other kind of weapon. The whole point is that information is powerful, and that the free flow of information, privacy-protected, empowers the powerless and is dangerous to the powerful -- and that's why we need our privacy protected.
Now let me just talk a wee bit about the future. A couple of days ago, a reporter called me and asked what the EFF stood for. I kind of floundered around and said, "Well, we want privacy, we want good hackers to be protected and bad crackers to be punished. We want people to understand the difference, and we want all these good things, but we really don't want to grab power." The guy kept on not quite getting it. The real answers were pro choice. We don't want someone else to make all these decisions for anybody. We don't even want the majority to rule. In every way that is possible, we want the minorities to control their own conditions in their own lives. There are very few things that are the province of government, but way too many things nowadays are being given to the government carelessly, fearfully, whatever. In my terms -- and I happen to be a right-wing person in terms of the economy and private freedoms -- I want more markets and fewer governments. Markets give choices to individuals. They let people trade what they don't want for what they do want. Again, to the extent possible, they want people to make individual choices.
What worries me is large concentrations of power, making choices for people. Big business, big government, even big media. The media until now have mostly been our protectors, because they go out and produce information, they use anonymous sources where necessary, and they make that information free. What protected global networking is going to do is give more and more of that power to individuals, and help reduce the power of big institutions of any kind. We are going to have small businesses flourishing, because it is easier for them to collect resources. You don't need to have a giant monolithic corporation to be efficient any more, and so a lot of marketplace economies of scale will even disappear, as we have better networking, better coordination. We have markets like the American Information Exchange, and if you don't know what that is, come and see me, or Hugh Daniel, or a couple of other people.
On the social side, I think 20 years ago... when you mentioned 15 years ago, I thought, Yes, that must have been about 1940. Then I realized... Anyway, some time ago there was all this talk about the global village. We're going to have mass broadcasting, we're going to have mass E-mail, we're going to have this global village. We don't. What we have is a lot of global villages, but as Mitch said, they're no longer geographical, physical villages. They're small, geographical villages of people with like interests. The big question becomes, How do we avert tribalism? It might not be nation against nation any more, but it certainly will be rich against poor, and franchised versus disenfranchised.
LIASSON: Thank you all very much. Now we can all try to stir up the pot a little bit. Somewhere between Mitch's paradise and the Simon's apocalypse is probably what's really going to happen. I want to just jump off from what Esther said about you all being in a minority and what kind of responsibility you owe to the rest of the world. We're in the midst of a presidential election and not one single candidate has said anything about Cyberspace. I am wondering if you think they should, and what are the kinds of extremely important issues that you think should be discussed? Should they be discussed in a kind of mass, political forum? Or should they be left to an elite like you to discuss and decide, and not really spend a whole lot of energy trying to translate or disseminate them to the great masses of people? I guess what I am wondering is, if you were an advisor to one of the presidential candidates, or a candidate yourself, how would you go about interjecting these things? Or wouldn't you bother at all?
DYSON: Does he want to get elected, or does he want to make a point?
LIASSON: I think he wants to make a point. If he wants to get elected, I think the discussion would stop right now.
DYSON: Let me just try a serious answer. I think what a candidate could say is, "I'm no longer going to protect the textile industry, the peanut butter interests, the sugar guys, the antediluvian steel mills. If I'm going to have an industrial policy and help anyone, it's going to be new technology. I'm going to focus on investment in R&D. I am going to create a national infrastructure for telecommunications, just the way we created a highway system years ago. I'm going to put people to work doing these things." I think that would go over reasonably well. I think it's something most of us would agree on. (laughter) We have an industrial policy -- we might as well acknowledge it, and we might as well have it be forward-looking.
KAPOR: Now there is something about the question as to whether this is presidential material that I think is ironic, given that most people really want to vote for "none of the above." We know in our hearts that we have come to a particular period in history in which the presidential spectacle seems to be particularly irrelevant to whatever set of problems we have on our minds. As a great believer in democracy, I think this is incredibly lamentable. We need to do something about this, because there are a lot of issues, but Cyberspace is not ready for prime time. It would be trivialized -- I have seen what Geraldo did to hackers, and I don't need to see any more.
It seems to me that the presidential candidates are really not the leaders that they ought to be, but are always putting their finger to the wind to see if they can detect some current of values or beliefs that can help get them elected. And I think that -- I'm not espousing utopian vision -- there needs to be an utopian vision out there, so people have something to give them some inspiration. But values are a lot more important than technology. There are some values in this community -- and I'm not sure if it's an elite or a minority or both -- but it's really in the propagation of a sense of values about openness and tolerance, acting on that basis and living one's life, and saving capitalism from itself and things like that where we can make a difference. If some of the expressions are technological, that's fine. We are living in an era where people like buttons, and so on. If we do that well, the presidential candidates are going to be coming to us.
LIASSON: You talk about Cyberspace not being ready for prime time -- I still want a definition of Cyberspace in 25 words or less -- but I think you want to transform prime time to a certain extent.
DYSON: Mostly I agree with this, but the press does have two roles: one is collecting information and uncovering things, and the other is setting the agenda. If 12,000 voices are crying out, who's going to listen to them? Who's going to notice when they do discover that the President did something wrong? Again, it's a check and balance sort of thing, but there is a certain community that is created by collective media.
KAPOR: Esther, what makes you believe that in Cyberspace Mara won't have two hours a day of her own that everyone listens to. (laughter) She might get more time than she gets today, because people trust her.
DYSON: But then she becomes prime time.
LIASSON: But you said before that instead of one global village, we have a lot of little global villages. I'm wondering if instead, we won't have millions of little huts. I mean individual huts. There are just so many different choices.
LIASSON: What I'm wondering is, if everybody becomes their own producer, publisher, what does that mean for the future?
KAPOR: I think we'll get a much more fluid, self-organizing state. I don't think in practice everybody is going to be what we think of today as a broadcast publisher. I just want things to be able to sort themselves out in a much more equitable fashion. We have this enormous, artificial scarcity today over the means of communication, because the government awards licenses which self-perpetuate. They are about to do the same thing, and give every broadcast television station another license for HDTV. So if you've got a license today, you get a second one; if you don't have one, you get nothing. That is going to be our policy about HDTV. I think it would be a lot better if we had more markets, more choices, and better values. I don't know how to do better values, but we know how to do more choices. So the point is, we'll wind up with some new regime which I don't think that we can particularly predict. I don't think that it is going to be chaotic or anarchic. I think there is something about people as social animals or creatures -- we will create some new forms of social organization. There will be information middlemen; there will be the equivalent of editors and packagers. There will be trusted intermediaries who help organize these new media. If you open it up and equalize things so that everybody can participate, you will get more diversity of points of view, you will get less homogenization. One of the reasons that tons of people have just dropped out, or are in terminal couch-potato-dom is that the sets of choices and the values that come across the tube are not ones that stir the human heart. And people know that. They can't figure out what to do about that, so they sort of fuzz out on drugs and alcohol. I say let's edit TV, which is the electronic drug. Let's do something about that.
DAVIES: I like your idea, Mitch. I think it's sweet. (laughter) The problem is that I really worry that the ultimate test of the future is going to be the outcome of the quest, the battle between those who are looking for the sort of vision you've got of the right of the individual, the individual being the producer. And that, probably, is the way we solve our problems on this planet. But there is the other side, and that's the planetary managers. Planetary management is the path of the least resistance. You know all the powermongers go for the planetary management model, because they all think they can clamber over the bodies to get to the top. Ultimately the test is going to be who comes out on the top, the individual rightist or the planetary managers. Unfortunately, I'm not a betting man, but at the moment I'd like to bet on the planetary managers.
DYSON: Part of this issue is reducing the value of incumbency, whether it's incumbency in prime time live, or incumbency in the government. There is much more fluidity of movement; you can't accumulate power because the unorganized forces have more power than you do.
P. DENNING: I feel a little strange being on the left end of the stage, because most people think of me as being on the far right sometimes, but right now I'd like to comment on something that is halfway between what Mitch is saying, and what Simon is saying. The way I hear what Simon is saying, is that there is a disease of today which I will call inward- centeredness. We are very worried about ourselves and our organizations. We find in that orientation a lot of instability of things and technologies that change rapidly. In order to achieve the world that Mitch is talking about, we need to cure the disease, and instead come from an orientation that we could call outward-centeredness, instead of inward-centeredness. The question is the shift from, How do we accumulate power? to, How do we help others accumulate power? How do we go from looking for stability in things to looking for stability in relationships? In watching my own children grow up, I am convinced that they know more about this than I do. In listening to some of the younger people here, I'm more convinced that they know more about this than I do. They know something about the outward-centeredness that I have yet to learn. Observing this among children and among students gives me a lot of optimism, as a matter of fact, against the apocalypse that Simon talks about, because Simon is talking about the world that would be created if we continued "us," and I think that the world that is being created by our children with their outward-centeredness is going to be the kind of world that Mitch is pointing towards. And I am much more optimistic about that than Simon is.
LIASSON: Roland, I wonder if we can interject you into this discussion a little bit. You have been a policymaker. What can be done to make sure that Simon's vision doesn't come true, and something a little closer to what Esther and Mitch describe does happen?
HOMET: I think we probably need both doom seers and paradise seekers. We'll always have them, and we should have them. It's between the swing of those two views that things happen. I think that this notion of replacing the gatekeepers and letting everybody perform his own dance, to the amusement of those who chose to tune in, is one that many of us were promoting 20 years ago. That's not 1940 -- that's 1970 (laughter), and we were quite convinced that was likely to happen by the end of that decade. Now it's 12 years beyond the end of that decade, and we're nowhere near having that happening. We just have newly-named controversies, and so, as you heard me say in my little short remark, I think that our objective ought to be more modest, and that is to keep the questions open, not let them be foreclosed -- certainly not prematurely, and not on the basis of inadequate evidence. I would say something about the apocalyptic view, which is, I think there is a difference between information policy questions and welfare questions. The poor we have always with us, as somebody once said, and whether information, Cyberspace -- whatever you want to call it -- is promoted or not, that is true. It may become more glaringly true in an advanced information society, in which case, more may be done about it. So I wouldn't despair about that, and I wouldn't hold back on the development of instruments of interconnection simply because we can see that there is and will remain an underclass. Perhaps if we do the one, we'll be better equipped to do the other.
LIASSON: In just a minute or two, we're going to open this up to your questions, but I want to try to end maybe with a discussion of something quite specific, which is, Who should own the new infrastructure and information systems? Should they be publicly owned? There are lots of conflicts even within the vision that you lay out.
KAPOR: The first point I'd make is let's not make the unnecessary mistake of betting on a single infrastructure. Technologically, we don't need to do that. In the 1930s, pre-digital, the old Bell system was the social contract. You get a monopoly, you have an obligation to provide universal service. We've learned a few things about how to do things with interoperable standards and how to interconnect multiple, independent providers and carriers. One of the fathers of the Internet, Vint Cerf, is sitting here in the front row, and he deserves an enormous amount of credit for insisting on this vision and promulgating it. A lot of the risks that come with private ownership of infrastructure go away when it's no longer a monopoly. The abusive problems that are sometimes experienced with local phone service and cable companies -- both of which are private sector monopolies -- I would say come more from not their private sector character, but from their monopoly character. If it is possible for there to be competition, that serves as the most effective check that we know of in this society against abuse. So I would opt for private infrastructure, but lots of it. Government has to make sure that everybody stays interconnected -- it's the referee that keeps the playing field level, doesn't let people cheat, and sort of bangs a few heads together when people get a little too greedy, or a little too selfish. If we do that, that will provide for the most choice and the most diversity.
LIASSON: Are we all in agreement on that?
HOMET: Not entirely. I think the question is less who should own infrastructure than how it should be classified. There may be a role for government in, for example, extending communication pipes to rural America for at least a period, as with the TVA. We have always had that question. There has always been a mixed economy with government doing some things and private sector others. It's a debate and should be a debate about who does what best. It should be revised from time to time, but the important question is, If we get a significant distribution system like cable television, how should we classify it? I speak here from the heart, because 20 years ago, I was trying to fasten onto, or gain the recognition for, cable as a broadband distribution system which was only trivially in the program production and publishing business, but was very much in the distribution business and ought to have been treated as a common carrier open to all information suppliers. Had that happened, we would have been very much further along in the vision that some of us had 20 years ago. (applause) It tends to support what I said about not going in for premature freezing or characterization of how things look. It was decided, because the broadcasters felt threatened, to treat cable as a species of broadcasting. That's the greatest frittering away of resources in my lifetime, and perhaps in the lifetime of the United States of America. Let's not make that mistake again. Let's be clear-eyed and ask the broad-scale questions about public use and benefit. Thank you.
LIASSON: Let's open it up to the audience. If you have any questions ... oh my God, wrestle your way to the microphone!
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Let us not forget the history of the commons in which a wealthy society creates in its overflowing abundance structures on which all people can participate. This was originally, back in medieval society, the structure that was created for the support of the poor. In the abundance of the land in which the overpopulation was not a question, and there was much agriculture to go around, and the poor were supported out of the commonly-owned things that were jointly owned by all society. That's all I have to say.
LIASSON: Who wants to start?
DAVIES: Sticking to my apocalyptic vision just for the moment, because that's how I'm characterized, what I would like to see, just as my own social experiment, if you like, is for the various groups that this room represents and groups that you are all involved in, is to actually set up the apocalyptic vision, and then see how you as part of the information technology community can utilize it, stop it, or reverse it. It's only when you see the vision and see your own part in it that we are actually going to set up solutions. I mean, that is a straight, outright homework assignment, and I think would be a great benefit for everybody. Then go on and publish them through the E-mail, or the Internet, whatever.
DYSON: Something along the lines of go find the most influential person you know well enough to influence, who you do not agree with -- assuming that you all agree with me, of course -- and attempt to win that person over to your point of view. In other words, don't stick to your own community. Don't just talk to the people who only agree with you. Go out and evangelize or proselytize to people who don't understand what this stuff is about. Do it in such a way that you are not superior or offputting; don't try to be right; try to win and expand this community, not in terms of pressure or rightness, but in terms of understanding what we are about. The biggest problem is ganging up on some of these politicians and having them think that this stuff is not cute, or weird, or colorful, or irrelevant, but incredibly important. Make the rest of the world know about us.
HOMET: I would like to second that motion. The story is told that when a beautiful woman comes out on a street in Paris, every man within eyeshot becomes in that instant much more intensively himself. (laughter) What I would suggest to you, if you are energized by this subject, is to be yourself. To thine own self be true, and perhaps to add to that the biblical admonition to the apostles -- if I remember it correctly -- and this picks up what Esther was saying -- to be wise as snakes, and cunning as foxes. Go out there to persuade.
P. DENNING: I'd like to add to that. It is not only within yourself that you have to look, it's within others. Don't assume that you know the answers, but go talk to people. Don't just talk to us, because we already know what "us" has to say, but go to talk to people that we haven't talked to and find out what concerns them.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hi, my name is Lou Woleneck. I'm from the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas. I'm a graduate student. I have a question, a general policy question, about how we should go about providing the information resources to the have-nots that the information elites have access to now. What sort of strategy that you all would have for that?
KAPOR: A 30-second or less answer, which is to set a national policy that updates a universal service for the 21st century that says everybody needs to have basic minimal access to a digital platform that reaches into every home, into every office and school in the country. We should focus our attention on how to put in place the least expensive amount of infrastructure that will produce that. What we find is, if we do that, then the overwhelming majority of American families will find it already within their budget to be able to do that, because it will be priced like basic phone service. To the extent that we need to continue or even slightly expand the kinds of lifeline programs that subsidize today's basic voice telephone service for a small percentage of the population, we should be prepared to renew that commitment. We don't need to bankrupt ourselves to give everybody access to a digital platform.
JIM WARREN: My name is Jim Warren. Two quick observations: there were several cynical comments during the last several days about a number of IRS people being here. It turns out, because they never had a platform to say this, that the whole crowd from the IRS who are here, as I understand it, are from the IRS privacy project, intent on developing policies to assure privacy protection for taxpayer information. So let us not be so cynical about their being here; otherwise, remember that they are simply doing what they are told to do by our representatives. (laughter and hisses) I was also bothered by both Simon's, and (my God!) Esther's comments on those evil little men, and the men in politics, etc. Gee, this is a modern age, let's say "men and women," for evil deeds, as well as good deeds.
DYSON: There aren't enough women in politics for there to be any evil ones.
WARREN: Well, I am sure that I can find some evil ones for you. (laughter) Anyway, to the main points: I would say that we are not so much elite, in that we are open to anyone who takes the initiative to join us, and many of us are active mentors in trying to get others to join us. I would say simply that we are a minority, and it occurs to me that revolution has always been a minority activity. It was not millions of Russians who opposed the attempted coup several months ago. It was ten, twenty, or thirty thousand in Moscow, with the aid of communications. It was not a massive movement, a populist movement, in America that resisted the Crown, two centuries ago. It was a small minority of activists and we are the activists here -- we are the revolutionaries. Freedom has always been a do-it-yourself activity, but the key syllable in that word activity is act. Let us reaffirm freedom of speech, press, assembly, security against undue search and seizure -- the basic constitutional freedoms and privileges. Let us demand that our politicians and our political candidates do the same in explicit formal commitments to act in behalf of protecting electronic civil liberties, just as they validate and speak favorably for traditional civil liberties. We can write our politicians, write our candidates and say, "Take a position in favor of civil liberties, regardless of the technology of the moment." Thank you.
GLENN TENNEY: Thank you for the introduction, Jim.
LIASSON: Are you from the IRS?
TENNEY: No. (laughter) My name is Glenn Tenney, and I have a question for you, Mara. I think that I have enough supporters on the panel. I'm not too curious about their views, but they are welcome to them. You questioned if the presidential election and race is ready for Cyberspace. What about Congress? I'm running for Congress -- is it ready for me?
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Ms. Liasson, I believe that you have opened a can of worms called politics for this little hacker community. You certainly have with me in your comment about asking for comments for the Cyberspace era from presidential candidates. I have very strong reactions to that. I think that I am going to try to express them, as a pure statement, or maybe an actual story. Several years ago, I was discussing with a friend of mine the current presidential, the then-current presidential election. He was asking me why I wasn't rabidly supporting Jesse Jackson. I thought about it, and my first response was, "Well, let's talk about the other candidates for a second. What about -- and I'll take a random name -- Michael Dukakis?" And my friend looked at me and said, "Michael Dukakis, he's just an administrator, he's not a visionary." I thought about it, and I said, "Hold on, I'm an American, I'm not someone who's a slave of the Queen of England, or something like that. I'm my own visionary, I decide where I am going." I don't want the politicians walking around telling me that I am going to have an expressway system that's going to pave over all my favorite swamps to play in. I don't want the politicians walking around defining what I'm going to do in my life. I want to elect politicians to manage government for me, to provide the barest minimum necessities to keep us smoothly greased as individuals in living together, and I want those politicians to be of the people, and I don't want them to tell me what my opinions should be. Finally, I want to cap that off with when we have government deciding how our systems work for us, we can then end up with situations where we can say, "Oh yeah, that IRS guy or that government net guy, he was just doing his job when he banned cryptography," or something like that. That's not the sort of world that I want to live in. I want to live in a world, where each of us defines our little space in it. Thank you all.
LIASSON: I think we have time for just two more and then we'll have to wrap it up.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hi, to the apocalypse types. I'd like to say just one thing that somebody said: The truth will make you free. In that this technology is a vehicle of communication, I believe that it is a vehicle of the truth, and as long as we keep it free, the truth will be heard that much more. Now I have kind of a question with a bit of a statement. I am a learning-disabled college student. I didn't ever finish high school. I had a freshmen education in high school, because of educational problems, and adjustment problems, I never really got too far beyond that. I write probably a fifth of the speed of anyone in this room and I have a real hard time doing math without a calculator. That's part of the reason why I wasn't able to do well in school. I read very well, fortunately, so I was able to go in when I was eighteen and take my GED just flat out without studying for it. I'm not dumb, or uneducated by any standards, but what has allowed me to get an associate's degree in college, and what has allowed me to approach graduation and get a bachelor's degree in college is the kind of technology that we are dealing with. I have never had easy access to that technology. The barriers that I have faced have been ones of order, regimentation, and where people try and say, "Oh well, you don't fit in, you're not a CS student, you don't need those resources." I'm good with computers, I do a lot with them, I spend a lot of time with them. I hack, I don't do anything illegal, but I took a hacksaw to the frame of my nasty little 8088 about two years ago to cram some RAM into it, because that was the only way I could get it to fit and I needed it. Now I'm in a little bit better shape. I'm approaching the point where I would like to see ISDN real soon, because I need that kind of connectivity. You know, I'm doing interesting things that I find absolutely wonderful, but the idea that the kind of technology that is available to us, that is just there for the using, could be limited and unavailable to people, or that people would have to go through some of the things that I have had to go through, not being able to do well on tests, because I had no word processor available to me. That type of thing, even though they are all over the place, elsewhere. It was just that that wasn't an acceptable solution. That type of policy planning, that type of government, that type of order scares me. And I have to ask, what is your answer to that?
DAVIES: The apocalyptic vision of a world in grief and individual rights in crisis has nothing to do with a Luddite mentality, and it would be very dangerous for the people in this room to link the two together. I, for one, believe in technology. I am very grateful for it, and I think the world is a better place for it. I have great faith in the future, but technology's not a silver lining for the future. It's not an El Dorado, it's more like plutonium. The very great thing that technology does for all of us can also be used by the people who would repress our freedoms and all I am saying is be aware of that. Let's not marginalize people like me, who are saying, Hey look, we are going to have 15 billion people on the planet. We are going to have a political inversion, you know, that is going to create massive tensions that are going to repress our rights, or at least create a tension that we have never known before. Don't marginalize me -- don't shoot the messenger. I believe in technology, so please don't equate the apocalypse with Ludditism -- the two do not match.
LIASSON: We're about out of time. I'm going to turn this over to Lance.
HOFFMAN: Thank you, Mara. I'm really unhappy that we are out of time, but I feel that we have a contract to those who want to leave in a moment or two. Those who want to stay, can stay up here, are welcome to continue, until the hotel throws us out. Since Lu Kleppinger is in the room at the moment, I don't know when that will be, but we can probably have it for a little while. I just want to make a couple of comments before I formally close this meeting.
We have seen an awful lot happen in these last three days and there has been building, and indeed we will be continuing to some extent the work that Jim Warren started at CFP-1 -- a sense of community. It has been increased by the participation of various diverse groups. My one hope is that you do not stop that here. When each and every one of you goes home, contact -- I don't care whether it's by letter, or electronic mail, or even telephone, if you must -- three people that you have met here that you didn't know, or didn't know very well before, or perhaps only knew electronically, and now you know them in person, and continue talking with them and to their friends and colleagues. If you do that, this will be a success.
The other comment that I want to make is that Bruce Koball is going to need a lot of help for CFP-3. Please talk to him -- he is listed in the roster. Or better yet, don't do that, talk to him here, and then give him a month to chill out in Berkeley before he has to start working real hard. Check the message board, there are some messages that have not been picked up. You have your evaluation forms. If you haven't filled them out and you would like to, please do and turn them in. I have nothing else, except to thank you all for being such a good group and, hopefully, we'll see you next year in California. Thank you very much.
Support efforts at engaging society and government on the appropriate legal and social uses of technology.

Answer: Peter Denning.