Dyslexics at the leading edge - The Visual Talents of Dyslexics are On-target
for New Knowledge in the Visual Computer Age

Thomas G. West

During his afternoon presentation, Thomas G. West will address several questions posed by his book, In the Mind’s Eye. He will discuss the contributions and special talents of people with dyslexia from a historical perspective as well as suggest why many dyslexics are already at the forefront of technological change.

The questions to be posed include:

• Why do so many dyslexics seem to be risk takers? Why do they seem to excel using their special visual-spatial abilities, creative imagination and hands on skills?
• How can a family with generations of artistic, scientific, visual-thinking dyslexics also produce four Nobel prize winners?
• How can strong visual talents contribute over time to both school difficulties and to remarkable innovations and inventions? How is this increasingly important within a shifting technological context?
• Why do so many of today’s technologists and entrepreneurs seem to fit this pattern? Why do there seem to be so many of these individuals in places like Silicon Valley?

Thomas G. West is author of In the Mind’s Eye, selected as one of the “Outstanding Academic Books of 1998” by Choice magazine, a publication of the Association of College & Research Libraries of the American Library Association. Mr. West has recently joined the Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study at the George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, where he is developing a program of research which will investigate the visual and non-visual talents seen in many dyslexics and their families. He is especially interested in learning from the life experience of highly successful dyslexics — in business, science, film, art, design, media and computer graphic technologies.