Auto as self reflective.

Autism, technologically autistic behavior: inhibited, not emotive, removed or distant.

Examples

The inability of people to respond appropriately to stimulus due to a dependence on technology.

This type of non-responsiveness is characterized by an ignorance of basic knowledge about how machines or automatic operations take place. Besides not understanding how cars, computers, or air conditioners or aircraft work, the lack of operational understanding of particular tools leads to a fundamental misunderstanding of how technological systems interact with people to perform basic, ordinary or everyday tasks.

Automation requires that users become more capable, not less.

Frequently the specialization required to understand the mechanical, electronic, or automated features of one process hamper the acquisition of necessary understanding required to operate other tools. Thus air conditioning specialists require training that may preclude their having time to comprehend how to repair computers or diesel engines.

Autism implies too, the inability of people to appreciate or tolerate why technology, when it fails, becomes such a pervasive obstacle in everyday existence.

Etymology

"Auto" literally refers to oneself, it means "self." Thus automotive means self moving, self motivating or under one's own drive or direction.

The implication of automatic equipment is that such tools or machinery perform a self regulating operation. But the irony of any self actuating system is that is must be governed by some device that imparts a recognition of external circumstances to the operating machinery.

Hence, by analogy, autism is the loss of an ability to measure proportionately the level of one's responsiveness with respect to external conditions. As machinery alters our capacity to experience, interpret or even recognize external conditions, many people run the risk of not responding quickly enough or completely enough to a mechanical condition so as to remain in control of the devices. We use automated systems or tools to serve our transportation, agricultural, industrial, habitation or even recreational needs.

• Autistic in the technological sense refers to an inadequate level of responsiveness to the effective use of tools to achieve humane ends.

• Technological autism is a condition where improper, ineffective, or inappropriate behavior is elicited when we are engaged with tools, tool complexes or entire technologies.

• As one critic of mechanical technology, Ralph Waldo Emerson warned, "Things are in the saddle and ride mankind."

An automated device:

James Watt's (late 18th century) "double-ball governor" is a device used to regulate (automatically) the torque of the steam engine's drive shaft because it senses and compensates for any speeding up or slowing down of the rotational force of the main drive, without the need for an operator's interference with the performance of the steam engine.

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