In a room surrounded by machines at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab, a group of students and professors is sharing a deeply human moment. On a video screen Amanda Baggs, a 26-year-old woman with autism, is flapping her arms, rocking, sucking on a pen and scratching household objects, part of an lifted from video-sharing website YouTube.
“Far from being purposeless, the way that I move is an ongoing response to what is around me,” says the robotic voice that narrates her typed words. The class reacts emotionally – not out of pity but in response to Baggs’s proud and moving appeal for…
