The computer-generated information superhighway could launch a new renaissance of creativity for millions of visual thinkers! Some of the greatest minds in politics, science, literature, and the arts experienced undetected learning disabilities that stopped them from assimilating information the same way as their peers. Some of our most original intellects Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, Lewis Carroll, and Winston Churchill relied heavily on visual modes of thought, processing information in terms of images instead of words or numbers. In the "Mind's Eye" profiles gifted individuals who used non-traditional methods in their work as it explodes many myths about conventional intelligence and charts new vistas for today's computer visualisation technologies.Thomas G. West examines the learning difficulties experienced by these people and others, and how recent neurological research shows an association between visual talents and verbal difficulties. In the "Mind's Eye" probes new data on dyslexics to see how computers enhance the creative potential of visual thinkers, as well as interactive computer applications to all levels of education and work. Updated with a new preface, epilogue, and expanded notes, this volume could be the clarion call for educators and corporations to mine this untapped resource of highly creative talent in our midst.
Thomas G. West, author of In the Mind's Eye and Thinking Like Einstein
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 (one of only 13 books in their broad psychology, psychiatry and neuroscience category). 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 will be available in late 2011. In connection with In the Mind's Eye and his other writings, 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, New Zealand, Canada, Hong Kong, Taiwan and twelve European countries.
For years West wrote a column, "Images and Reversals," on the broad effects of visualization technologies for Computer Graphics, a quarterly publication of the international professional association for computer graphics artists and technologists (an organization with many creative, visual-thinking dyslexics). 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.
West is now working on a third book, this one dealing with high level creativity, visual thinking and role of brain diversity (including dyslexia, Asperger syndrome and other modes of thinking and learning) in several leading-edge businesses as well as several individual scientists and technological innovators (including one family with many visual thinkers, many dyslexics and four Nobel Prize winners).
