Greetings SIGGRAPH Participants --
Here is my 30-word entry, with affiliations, etc. – set out as in the existing “Birds of a Feather” listings on the website for SIGGRAPH 2014—Vancouver,
B.C. Below is a copy of my original
proposal – providing additional details for those interested. -- TGW
______________________________________
The Dyslexic Advantage in Computer Graphics
TUESDAY, 12 AUGUST 9:00 AM – 11:00 AM, ROOM 124
Some estimate that about half of the people in CG
are dyslexic. Among the very best, some believe all are dyslexic. There may be
very good reasons for these observations.
Thomas G. West, author of In the Mind’s Eye and Thinking
Like Einstein
Affiliations: DyslexicAdvantage.org and The
Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study
_____________________________________
Below is the full text of my previous proposal with reviews
and comments from several SIGGRAPH folks and others --
Proposal for SIGGRAPH 2014 – Vancouver, BC, Canada – August
10-14
The Dyslexic Advantage in
Computer Graphics
By Thomas G. West, author of In the Mind’s Eye and Thinking
Like Einstein
Some computer graphics professionals claim that
half of the people in the CG field are probably dyslexic. It is also observed
that some of the most talented CG teams may be as much as 100 percent dyslexic.
It is a pattern often observed in the CG field but almost never discussed. In
this “Birds of a Feather” session, Tom West will provide some history and
background for these connections -- and invite discussion among interested
attendees.
In recent years, dyslexia is coming to be seen,
remarkably, as a significant advantage in an increasing number of fields --
often linked to high visual talent and substantial success in art, architecture
and computer graphics – as well as design innovation, entrepreneurial business
and scientific discovery.
As hard as it is for many to believe, in recent
years in many fields, it is becoming increasingly clear that dyslexics are
capable of creating scenes and devising solutions that are beyond the reach even
the smartest non-dyslexics. It is also becoming increasingly clear that all of
this is because of the dyslexia, not in spite of it.
Recently, a small group of researchers is finding
more evidence that dyslexia does not result from damaged wiring in the brain as
many have long believed. Rather, in cases of developmental dyslexia, they see
an alternative (a different but valuable) wiring pattern – one that involves
some early educational difficulties – but one that provides many alternative
strengths and capabilities not available to non-dyslexic brain structures.
There are many cases of this paradoxical mix of
weaknesses and substantial strengths. It is becoming increasingly clear that these
are not unusual but are representative of an important subgroup that needs to
be understood in both education and work – especially within computer graphics
and related fields.
The power of visual thinking is often not
understood. For example, one of the founders of the modern study of molecular
biology was a powerful visual thinker and a classic dyslexic, with the usual
reading and writing problems in his early schooling. As he progressed into
laboratory work he found that he could predict the results of many experiments.
He found that he could use his powerful dyslexic visual imagination to see
interactions at the molecular level – seeing new patterns and developing
fundamental insights and new theories (twelve years ahead of all others in the
field) about the links between the human genetic code and the development of
the immune system. Later, a different scientist proved experimentally that he
was right and received a Nobel Prize.
In other examples – the National Science Foundation
has been funding a Harvard-Smithsonian study of when and where dyslexia may be
an advantage in doing science, especially within astrophysics. In the UK, the
dyslexic head of the Virgin Group explained long ago that his dyslexia has been
a motivator in building his group of more than 250 companies as well as giving
him a “business edge.” And, of course, in the field of computer graphics and
simulation, dyslexic artists, scientists and technologists are often leading
innovators.
A dyslexic professor at Columbia University has
written a book about how he was able to integrate complex information (in a
manner similar to many dyslexics) from extremely diverse sources to understand
how historic changes in ocean currents have led to abrupt climate change in the
past.
A world famous professor of paleontology tries to
teach his graduate students how to “think like a dyslexic” so they can see
patterns invisible to others, making discoveries long thought impossible. The
rest is “just memorization,” he says, without significant discovery or true
innovation.
Very recently, in a striking example, the British
electronic intelligence agency GCHQ announced publically, “Dyslexia is
Britain’s secret weapon in the spy war: Top code breakers can crack complex
problems because they suffer from the condition. GCHQ bosses say those with the
disorder see things in codes others do not. The Chelteham-based agency has set
up a dyslexia support group.” One agency official noted that “dyslexia may in
other circumstances be regarded as negative – but most people only get to see
the full jigsaw picture when it’s nearly finished while the dyslexic
cryptographists can see what the jigsaw looks like with just two pieces.”
An increasing number of researchers and
practitioners believe that learning from the lives of highly successful
dyslexics and visual thinkers can lead to new insights and approaches that will
help dyslexics and non-dyslexics alike -- profoundly transforming fundamental ideas
about education and work in a time when computer technologies are rapidly
turning the world upside down and the established education and psychology professionals
seem to have lost their way.
Accordingly, they say it is high time for us to
begin to recognize and understand and learn how to deal with these puzzling
extremes in talent – the unexpected academic weaknesses that are often
associated with special capabilities and success in both life and work.
Schools, they say, almost never teach or test what dyslexics are good at – but
life does. This is especially true for the many artists and technologists who
work in computer graphics.
Bio Sketch
Thomas G. West is the author of In the Mind's Eye: Creative Visual Thinkers, Gifted Dyslexics and the
Rise of Visual Technologies (Prometheus Books), selected as one of the
“best of the best” for the year by the American Library Association. A second
edition was released in September 2009 with Foreword by Oliver Sacks, MD, who
states: “In the Mind's Eye brings out the special problems of people with dyslexia, but also
their strengths, which are so often overlooked.
Its accent is not so much on pathology as on how much human minds vary.
It stands alongside Howard Gardner's Frames
of Mind as a testament to the range of human talent and possibility.”
In the
Mind’s Eye was published in Japanese translation in as Geniuses Who Hated School. A Chinese
translation was published in 2004. A Korean translation was released in 2011.
In connection with In the Mind's Eye and
his other writing, Mr. West has been invited to provide presentations for
scientific, medical, art, design, computer and business groups in the U.S. and
overseas, including groups in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Hong Kong,
Taiwan, Dubai-UAE and twelve European countries.
For
seven years West wrote a regular column, “Images and Reversals,” on the broad
effects of visualization technologies for Computer
Graphics, a quarterly publication of ACM-SIGGRAPH. These columns were
collected into a book with the title: Thinking
Like Einstein: Returning to Our Visual Roots with the Emerging Revolution in
Computer Information Visualization.
In recent years, West has been
invited to speak on dyslexia and talent at a Harvard-MIT brain and education conference,
at Magdalen College of the University of Oxford in England, the University of
California at Berkeley, the University of Malta, the University of Trieste in
Italy, the Arts Dyslexia Trust in London, England, and an education conference
in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. In 2013, West gave a talk on creative visual
thinking, computer graphic information visualization and dyslexia at Pixar
Animation Studios in Emeryville, California and presented a Director's Colloquium on a
similar topic for scientists and staff of NASA Ames Research Center (at Moffett
Field in California’s Silicon Valley). In 2014, West participated at a
conference of DyslexicAdvantage.org in San Francisco and will be giving a keynote
and a series of talks on dyslexia and talent at the Cosmos Club in Washington,
DC, at the Landmark College Summer Institute in Vermont and at the Dyslexia
Association of Singapore in Singapore.
Videos and Contact Information
Videos: Two videos -- and a more recent set of talks –
available on the web dealing with visual thinking, visual technologies and the
talents of dyslexics -- together with the two books by Thomas G. West –
(1) In December 2010, West was asked to travel to New York
to be filmed as part of a new author series developed for the website called
“AT&T Tech Channel”-- Science & Technology Author Series, “Thinking
Like Einstein.” About 17 minutes. Other than West’s two books, generally, the
books discussed on this site are very technical.
(2) On YouTube,
“Dyslexia: An Unwrapped Gift.” Shot in “The Chained Library” of Hereford
Cathedral in England, this video features Thomas West (with others) along with
several dyslexic British teenagers who were filmed when they were coming to
understand their own special areas of talent. Silva Productions, 1999, a
classic film still popular and often shown in UK education circles. Still
widely believed to be the best documentary for capturing the attention of
dyslexic teens--as well as suggesting the new world of visual technologies
where many dyslexics currently thrive. Provided on YouTube in two parts, about
9 minutes each.
(3) See on
YouTube many short talks from the April 2013 and March 2014 conferences on the
talents of dyslexics; key words “Dyslexic Advantage.”
Contact information: Thomas G. West, author of Thinking Like Einstein and In the Mind's Eye. Research Scholar Study Office 1W-16C, National
Library of Medicine. Institutional address: Krasnow Institute for Advanced
Study, Member of the Advisory Board, 4400 University Drive, MS 2A1, George
Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia 22030-4444. Email:
thomasgwest@gmail.com or thomasgwest@aol.com.
Blog: http://inthemindseyedyslexicrenaissance.blogspot.com.
____________________________________
Selected Reviews -- In the Mind’s Eye
“The computer is the most malleable tool we’ve
ever invented. The Turing revolution, which brought it to us, has proceeded
over its 60-year history to absorb field after field of human endeavor. First
was simple number crunching. Then text processing, table making, pie charting,
data basing, and a host of other, more sophisticated, fields have gone digital
with the new tool as human brain amplifier. Visualization is the latest domain
to become “ordinary” this way. Tom West argues that the legitimacy of
visualization as a first-order attack on problem solving is therefore being
established after generations of quiet use by only some creators -- and some of
the best at that. He claims that visualization is not only a legitimate way to
solve problems, it is a superior way: the best minds have used it. West urges
us to join the dyslexics of the world and use pictures instead of words. In the
process we get fascinating glimpses of how other minds have worked -- minds
that have changed the world.”
Alvy Ray Smith, electronic mail
message. Dr. Smith was co-founder of Pixar Animation Studios, former Director
of Computer Graphics at Lucasfilm, Ltd., and Graphics Fellow, Advanced
Technology, Microsoft Corporation. At Pixar, he formed the team that proceeded
to create Tin Toy, the first
3-dimensional computer animation ever to win an Academy Award. This team later
produced the first completely computer-generated motion picture, Toy Story. At Microsoft, he designed the
multimedia authoring infrastructure for Microsoft third party developers and
content producers. While he was a Regent for the US National Library of
Medicine, he was instrumental in inaugurating the Visible Human Project.
Selected Reviews and Comments -- Thinking
Like Einstein
“West . . . has compiled a set of
essays [which are] engaging on their own; together they explore the issues of
visualization from many perspectives. . . . . He makes a compelling case for
the growing importance of visualization as a powerful agent of change. . . .
The book is very readable and will attract a wide audience -- anyone interested
in better understanding the importance of visualization and some of its
history. Summing up: Highly recommended. All levels.”
R.A. Kolvoord, James Madison
University, Choice magazine (a
publication of the Association of College and Research Libraries of the
American Library Association), vol. 42, no. 08.
“ ‘ There is increasing evidence,’
writes Thomas G. West, . . . ‘that many
highly original and productive thinkers have clearly preferred visual over
verbal modes of thought.’ West argues that our traditional letter-
and-number-based education . . . has changed little from that of the medieval
clerks. ‘Written language is a technology,’ he claims, and technologies change:
‘[T]he kind of brain that lends itself poorly to an old technology may be just
what is wanted with a new technology.’ West doesn’t mean television and other
information-poor screen-based technologies; he means the visual literacy of
patterns and the creative use of computer graphics, which, he argues, will put
an end to the tiresome, age-old tension between word and image. Computers in
the classroom, he writes, allow students to ‘move rapidly on to high-level
conceptual matters and a variety of practical problems,’ as opposed to such
old-fashioned exercises as calculus sets and memorization. These are
path-breaking essays. . . . ”
Susan Salter Reynolds, Los Angeles Times Book Review.
“Drawing on a series of columns
that he wrote for [ACM-SIGGRAPH] Computer
Graphics magazine, West . . . postulates that we are on the verge of a new
era of visually-based thinking that will replace traditional word- and
number-based modes of teaching and learning. He is quick to point out that this
world of visual imaging is quite different from ubiquitous television images
comprising low information content and no interaction, citing as classic
examples Albert Einstein as well as some contemporary pioneers in the forefront
of visualization technologies. West explains how these individuals are working
to infuse visualization technologies into education and business. This is not a
how-to book . . . but instead a persuasive, provocative argument for the
societal benefits of visual thinking. Recommended for all computer science
collections.”
J. J. Accardi, Library Journal, vol. 129, no. 16.
“In this exciting and captivating
set of essays, Tom West makes a strong case for fundamentally rethinking and
revising our educational system by including visual literacy to balance our
overdependence on analytical approaches. The book explores the role visual
thinkers have played in creating scientific breakthroughs, and it makes a
compelling case for a future when individuals will develop their full creative
potential by ‘returning to our visual roots.’ I am envious of the author's
writing skill as well as his ability to weave, with diverse facts and stories,
a string of pearls.”
Michael McGrath, Professor of
Engineering, Emeritus, Colorado School of Mines; Formerly Education Director,
ACM-SIGGRAPH
“This book is a fascinating look
at the history of the relationship between logical and visual thinking. There
are aspects to this history that are both frightening and encouraging, and,
with the current pendulum swing back toward visualization as a respectable
thinking tool, it provides an important guide to what has been done before and
what can be done in the future.”
James F. Blinn, Graphics Fellow at
Microsoft Research; Columnist for IEEE
Computer Graphics; MacArthur Fellow; Recipient of the ACM-SIGGRAPH
Achievement Award and the Stephen Coons Award
“Thinking Like Einstein is a refreshing intellectual drink in the
drought of contemporary visual literacy. It raises important issues and
historical facts that restore the balance of power between nonverbal/visual
creative thinking and verbal/math creative thinking. The book is a valuable
tool that recognizes the potency of data-driven digital visualization and
empowers our visual technological futures. It is a must-read for any visualization
educator.”
Donna Cox, Director of
Visualization and Experimental Technologies, National Center for Supercomputing
Applications, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
