Member-only story
Robots Will Make Our Dreams Come True and Destroy Humanity
Can we have it both ways?
When I was in kindergarten there was a student who didn’t play well with other kids.
He would sit amongst the Tonka trucks and alphabet-inscribed blocks and talk to those toys as if they were his only friends.
He would giggle, laugh, and even argue with inanimate objects but would avoid other kids like the plague.
One time — when engaging him in play — he pushed me backward and I fell.
I wasn’t hurt but the next day his mother came to our classroom and explained that her little Tommy was different than most children and didn’t like to play with other kids.
53 years later, I remember Tommy’s brave Mom beginning to cry in front of us 5-year-olds as she thanked us for being patient with her sweet boy.
I remember some of my classmates crying too.
It was a cathartic, emotional, powerfully human event.
It mattered immensely to Tommy and us……and his Mom.
Looking back, Tommy was probably autistic but schools didn’t have the kind of special education and legal support for children with speech, language, and social disabilities back then — everyone was mainstreamed.
