'I see everything.'

I was initially reluctant to read this book, as my mother teaches children with autism and therefore keeps a stash of 'biography type' books on the subject. Some are narrowly more interesting than others. However this book recieved so much hype when it was published in 2003 that I felt now would be the time to see what the fuss was all about. I began to realise as I read through the fascinating life of Christopher that perhaps we as designers can associate with his 'emotionally dissociated mind' and the struggle to predict the emotions of others. As designers we attempt to go beyond predicting the emotions of a single person to predict the impact of design on the emotions of a population - especially in the case of commercial advertising. Also we often become fixated on a subject wanting to know all about a single subject to develop it futher than others have done before, this is comparable to Christophers knowledge of prime numbers or names of countries. Overall the book was a very entertaining read and shows how everybody views things differently. As designers we are encouraged to think 'outside the box', this book perhaps encourages us to look at things literally first. 'I see everything.' ( pg 174)