Of particular interest to me is Change.org's Autism section. It is co-authored by Dora Raymaker (who is herself autistic, not to mention an artist, complex systems scientist/grad student, and generally awesome person. Seriously, she knitted a PDA case for me with a robot on it!) and Kristina Chew, formerly of Autism Vox, who is a classics professor and the mother of a really cool autistic kid named Charlie who enjoys swimming and bike riding.
Anyway, I not only wanted to point out Change.org's autism section in general, but in particular a truly excellent post from Dora on communication -- a subject that one cannot help but encounter when one engages with anything autism-related (and which is more than relevant for people in general, regardless of neurology).
In this post, entitled The Dynamics of "Communication", Dora writes:
The DSM critiera for Autistic Disorder includes "qualitative impairments in communication." But the word "communication" is typically taken for granted without definition. Communication has a mathematical definition, which can be visualized in the image above. A sender has a message which she transmits through a channel to a receiver. During transmission, noise may distort the original message. The receiver decodes the message and then he feeds back to the sender. While this is a formal model, it is considered an accurate, if simplified, representation of communication between people.
...
Communication is dynamic. It is an active relationship. Communication is not something an autistic person does or does not do. Communication is something that people do or do not do together. In order to have effective communication, all parties in the relationship are responsible for keeping the communication flowing.
Dora's post also contains a really nifty diagram (the "image above" referred to in the quote) representing the process of communication, which you should definitely have a look at.
Over and out!
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