I had a friend in high school who was generally considered a bit odd. He didn't dress quite right, never knew how to "read the room," and often talked far too long and in far to much detail about computers- at a time when very few households even had one. The movie Rain Man, in which an autistic character is abducted from an institution by his greedy younger brother, had yet to be released, and certainly no one in my circle was familiar with autism. Once we were, it was Dustin Hoffman's portrayal of Raymond Babbitt that defined our understanding. For decades, this was the dominant image, even...