When an autist sees a sign where is written ‘ don’t step on the grass’ he or she wold understand it as ‘ do not step in all grass in the whole world at all times’. That is because they understand the message literally. We, “normal” people, would interpret the message and understand that as the sign is placed in a piece of grass inside a park the message is about the grass in the park. We, normal people, have the ability to understand context and to interpret. We have always been proud of it and all our culture is made of it. Of human fuzziness. The autist logic is also the computer logic. All data is understood literally.
When I read the news on the Guardian about the arrest of a man for making a joke about terrorism on Twitter, I asked myself about our understanding of ‘normality’. The very awkward (but not isolated) story shows how we are transforming ourselves in the ones that are unable to understand humor, irony, sarcasm and all the fuzziness in human life.
Last week Paul Chambers was due to fly from Doncaster’s Robin Hood airport to Ireland in the New Year, but heavy snow intervened. In frustration, he sent off a tweet to his friends. “Robin Hood airport is closed,” he wrote. “You’ve got a week and a bit to get your shit together, otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!!”. Because of this *hugely tasteless joke of questionable humour*, Chambers was arrested under the Terrorism Act 2000 and questioned for seven hours before being released on police bail. He has been suspended from work and his computer, iPhone and laptop have been confiscated and he has been banned from Robin Hood Airport for life.
File it alongside the Muslim schoolboy questioned after uploading a photo to Facebook of himself posing with a gun (he was playing paintball at the time);or the German airline passenger who was arrested recently for making a joke to security about the bomb in his underwear; or the unfortunate man recently cleared of an extreme pornography charge after prosecutors accepted that the animal involved in the bestial scene was actually a cartoon tiger, not a real one. Or the arrest of photographers taking pictures in public; or any of the hundreds more seemingly isolated recent instances of people being detained or arrested for activities that barely tickle the toes of criminality.

We are a paranoid, risk-averse society but we are not androids yet!
more on the Guardian

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