kestrell | Entries tagged with prosthetics

I'm still trying to find where the sighted housemates hid the stopper for the bathroom sink so that I can plug it in order to rinse out my prosthetic eyes without worrying that they are going to drop down the drain into whatever lies down in the ancient pipes of our old Victorian house, and then we will have to call the special plumbers who still know how to fix things in very old Victorian houses in order to retrieve my very expensive eyeballs from the eldritch horror of whatever lives in the abyss.

So, yes, one of my few nagging anxieties is that I will lose my eyeballs down the bathroom sink, and checking that I know where the plug for the sink is is a thing I do on a regular basis. And this plug is a heavy metal stopper, it isn't easy to lose, so really, people *sigh*...

I probably wouldn't be so freaked if I hadn't read all those Clive Baeker stories in which he goes into *excruciating* detail about things that can live in your bathroom pipes...

Kes: I totally fangirl for Hugh Herr and, if you are interested in prosthetics, I encourage you to go read the rest of this article, and then go read more about Hugh Herr's work.

excerpt

Interdisciplinary research center funded by philanthropist Lisa Yang aims to mitigate disability through technologies that marry human physiology with electromechanics.
September 23, 2021
https://news.mit.edu/2021/new-bionics-center-established-mit-24-million-gift-0923

With the establishment of the new K. Lisa Yang Center for Bionics, MIT is pushing forward the development and deployment of enabling technologies that communicate directly with the nervous system to mitigate a broad range of disabilities. The center’s scientists, clinicians, and engineers will work together to create, test, and disseminate bionic technologies that integrate with both the body and mind.

The center is funded by a $24 million gift to MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research from philanthropist Lisa Yang, a former investment banker committed to advocacy for individuals with visible and invisible disabilities. Her previous gifts to MIT have also enabled the establishment of the K. Lisa Yang and Hock E. Tan Center for Molecular Therapeutics in Neuroscience, Hock E. Tan and K. Lisa Yang Center for Autism Research, Y. Eva Tan Professorship in Neurotechnology, and the endowed K. Lisa Yang Post-Baccalaureate Program.

....To develop prosthetic limbs that move as the brain commands or optical devices that bypass an injured spinal cord to stimulate muscles, bionic developers must integrate knowledge from a diverse array of fields — from robotics and artificial intelligence to surgery, biomechanics, and design. The K. Lisa Yang Center for Bionics will be deeply interdisciplinary, uniting experts from three MIT schools: Science, Engineering, and Architecture and Planning. With clinical and surgical collaborators at Harvard Medical School, the center will ensure that research advances are tested rapidly and reach people in need, including those in traditionally underserved communities.

To support ongoing efforts to move toward a future without disability, the center will also provide four endowed fellowships for MIT graduate students working in bionics or other research areas focused on improving the lives of individuals who experience disability.

The center will be led by Hugh Herr,
https://www.media.mit.edu/people/hherr/overview/
a professor of media arts and sciences at MIT’s Media Lab, and
Ed Boyden,
https://mcgovern.mit.edu/profile/ed-boyden/
the Y. Eva Tan Professor of Neurotechnology at MIT, a professor of biological engineering, brain and cognitive sciences, and media arts and sciences, and an investigator at MIT’s McGovern Institute and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
A double amputee himself, Herr is a pioneer in the development of bionic limbs to improve mobility for those with physical disabilities.“The world profoundly needs relief from the disabilities imposed by today’s nonexistent or broken technologies. We must continually strive towards a technological future in which disability is no longer a common life experience,” says Herr. “I am thrilled that the Yang Center for Bionics will help to measurably improve the human experience for so many.”
Boyden, who is a renowned creator of tools to analyze and control the brain, will play a key role in merging bionics technologies with the nervous system. “The Yang Center for Bionics will be a research center unlike any other in the world,” he says. “A deep understanding of complex biological systems, coupled with rapid advances in human-machine bionic interfaces, mean we will soon have the capability to offer entirely new strategies for individuals who experience disability. It is an honor to be part of the center’s founding team.”

Kes: Really? It's us silly blind people who don't want to look silly? It wouldn't have anything to do with health insurance companies that won't even pay for an accessible phone or a smart plug let alone a multi-thousand dollar prosthetic device?
Because I have a degree from MIT and I wrote my thesis on images of disability and technology in science fiction: I think looking like a cyborg is aplus, and I *know* I'm not the only one.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-human-os/biomedical/devices/neuroscientists-unveil-tech-for-the-vision-impaired-bionic-eyes-textured-tablets-and-more
As a disability and technology advocate, I particularly object to the following uninformed statement:

“All of these wearables currently on the market have very low acceptance from the community because you look like some sort of RoboCop when you wear them, and people don’t want to attract attention to their impairment,” said Ruxandra Tivadar of the University of Bern in Switzerland, during the annual meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society (CNS), held virtually this week.

It's really easy for people who are daily surrounded by the very newest tech to forget that many people in their own cities are living without access to the basic technologies of transportation, or an accessible phone, or high-speed Internet access.
Let me open your eyes to some of the basic technologies that many people with disabilities have been going without during this pandemic.
How We All Became Disabled, But We’re Still Not All Connected
https://kestrell.dreamwidth.org/379979.html

Kes: Also, let me correct the BBC writer: it isn't the catwalks that are at the forefront of embodying the future, it's people with disabilities, so nyeh.

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20210219-why-pop-stars-are-having-prosthetic-makeovers

Kes: Proprioception! This was one of my favorite words from writing my thesis in 2006, which included some of this research, especially as it related to prosthetics and assistive technology.

When Objects Become Extensions of You
By: Michael J. Spivey
https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/when-objects-become-extensions-of-you/

When a tool in your hand “becomes part of you,” it’s not just a metaphor. And it’s not just a statistical description of the motions of your body and the motions of the tool. It’s real. Your brain makes it real.
Remarkably, neurons that respond specifically to objects that are within reach of your hand will also respond to objects that are close to a tool that’s in your hand. Cognitive psychologists Jessica Witt and Dennis Proffitt found that when they asked people to use a reaching tool (a 15-inch orchestra conductor’s baton) to reach targets that were just out of range, the targets looked closer than when they intended to reach without the tool.

....Even if the brain just pretends that the tool is part of its body, then the tool is part of its body.

....Whether they are tools, toys, or mirror reflections, external objects temporarily become part of who we are all the time. When I put my eyeglasses on, I am a being with 20/20 vision, not because my body can do that — it can’t — but because my body-with-augmented-vision-hardware can. So that’s who I am when I wear my glasses: a hardware-enhanced human with 20/20 vision.

If you have thousands of hours of practice with a musical instrument, when you play music with that object, it feels like an extension of your body — because it is. When you hold your smartphone in your hand, it’s not just the morphological computation happening at the surface of your skin that becomes part of who you are. As long as you have Wi-Fi or a phone signal, the information available all over the internet (both true and false information, real news and fabricated lies) is literally at your fingertips. Even when you’re not directly accessing it, the immediate availability of that vast maelstrom of information makes it part of who you are, lies and all. Be careful with that.
This article is adapted from Michael Spivey’s book “Who You Are: The Science of Connectedness

I just know that there is a Jonathan Coulton song in this somewhere https://scitechdaily.com/new-tool-for-surgeons-3d-bioprinted-heart/

Thinking how this could benefit the production of prosthetics, making them cheaper and easier to produce, and also capable of making parts that need to be extra-durable, such as joints for arms and legs
https://scitechdaily.com/move-over-plastic-desktop-3d-printing-in-metal-and-ceramics/

Anyone else spend an hour trying to find the perfect face mask? Alexx helped me pick out a very tentacular green man mask. Now I'm trying to figure out what costume, complete with appropriate mask, I will be wearing for Halloween.

Here are three articles and an essay by Oscar Wilde that explore the facets of mask-wearing

The Truth of Masks: A Note on Illusion by Oscar Wilde
http://www.online-literature.com/wilde/1310/

3 Questions: Historian Emma Teng on Face Masks
https://news.mit.edu/2020/meanings-face-masks-emma-teng-0819

MIT: The Meanings of Masks
https://shass.mit.edu/news/news-2020-pandemic-meanings-masks-series

At the Heart of Dismal U.S. Coronavirus Response, A Fraught Relationsip with Masks Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/at-the-heart-of-dismal-us-coronavirus-response-a-fraught-relationship-with-masks/2020/07/28/f47eccd0-cde4-11ea-bc6a-6841b28d9093_story.html

_Broken Places and Outer Spaces_
by Nnedi Okorafor

Full disclosure: this is the book I have been waiting for for months, and I will be talking about it a lot at Readercon. I am still flabbergasted that something I had to keep explaining to people back in 2006, namely,
using science fiction for writing memoir
https://kestrell.livejournal.com/162420.html
has become a recognized genre called speculative memoir
https://electricliterature.com/why-adding-monsters-and-fairies-to-a-memoir-can-make-it-even-more-real/
and that a writer as talented as Nnedi Okorafor has written the quintessential example of the form, all in under one hundred pages.

Okorafor is, at this cultural moment, a critical darling, and lots of people have written lots of prose about the genius of her stories, which might lead a reader to assume that her writing is full of literary flourishes and postmodern pyrotechnics, but this is far from the case. Quite the opposite: Nnedi Okorafor's literary voice is as sleek and precise as the prosthetics she loves describing. If her literal legs fail to take her places as swiftly as they used to, her liteary wings take her--and us along with her--as high and fast as she wishes to fly. And with these transformed and transformative wings, she goes places she probably would never have thought to go when she was able-bodied, a fact she illustrates in describing her admiration for another science fiction trickster, Hugh Herr, which delighted me to no end, because I fangirl for Hugh Herr also. If you don't know who Hugh Herr is, he is a MIT scientist and self-identified cyborg who designs and wears prosthetic legs, and you can find him on Ted Talks, also.

_Broken Places and Outer Spaces_ grew out of a Ted talk, and you can find more about Okorafor and her new book at the Ted Talks Web site:

Learning to Fly: How a hospital stay helped Nnedi Okorafor find herself as a writer
https://ideas.ted.com/learning-to-fly-how-a-hospital-stay-helped-nnedi-okorafor-find-herself-as-a-writer/
"Write your story, and don't be afraid to write
it" -- A sci-fi writer talks about finding her voice and being a superhero
https://ideas.ted.com/write-your-story-and-dont-be-afraid-to-write-it-a-sci-fi-writer-talks-about-finding-her-voice-and-being-a-superhero/

Checking up on the status of the Tactical Assault Light Operator Suit (TALOS), I found this article from earlier this year
https://taskandpurpose.com/talos-iron-man-suit-dead
and I'm struck by how integrated science fiction has become in talking about the design--I mean, Iron Man is mainstream media now, but Starship Troopers is old school. Anyway, the military exoskeleton is one of my favorite military/disability/science ficion intersections, but I'm kind of amused that the military can't get its devices to work with each other, either.

Also note that they will be starting a Patrion in order to raise money to provide more accessibility
http://www.medievalists.net/2019/02/disabilities-in-the-middle-ages-with-kisha-tracy/

Current Mood: fascinated
Current Location: aerye

We are living in a world where teenagers, and even younger kids, are rejecting the cultural pressure to quote look normal unquote and instead using inexpensive technologies to roll their own prosthetics for themselves and others, and a lot of them are inspired by science fiction heroes. This is why we need good science fiction stories. I even forgive Tony Stark for being such a jerk.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-spain-lego-prosthetic-arm/brick-by-lego-brick-teen-builds-his-own-prosthetic-arm-idUSKCN1PW155

Current Mood: optimistic
Current Location: aerye
Current Music: something classical

Not really notes from the panel but my writings on blind characters, science fiction, and the technology of prosthetic eyes.

What Good Writers Still Get Wrong About Blind People, Part 1
https://kestrell.livejournal.com/593188.html#/593188.html

Part 2
https://kestrell.livejournal.com/593549.html#/593549.html

Part 3
https://kestrell.livejournal.com/593697.html#/593697.html

A great post on writing about blind characters from the writer's perspective
Why is Oree Shoth blind?
by M. K. Jemisin
http://nkjemisin.com/2011/01/why-is-oree-shoth-blind/

My thesis: Decloaking Disability: Images of Disability and Technology in Science Fiction Media
https://cmsw.mit.edu/alicia-kestrell-verlager-images-of-disability-and-technology-in-science-fiction-media/

How Kestrell's prosthetic eyes were made, or, Kestrell and Alexx Go to the Ocularist
Part 1
https://alexx-kay.livejournal.com/287659.html

Part 2
https://alexx-kay.livejournal.com/289581.html

Current Mood: mercurial
Current Location: aerye
Current Music: The Devil's Music playlist

I like the way he mentions not being able to play video games with his dad as a spur to his wanting to create the prosthetic.
https://www.3dprint.com/204866/teen-3d-prints-arm-for-his-dad/

http://www.independent.com/news/2011/jan/16/one-legged-stuntman-becomes-bionic/

I was reading _The Octopus and the Orangutan_, which is about anecdotal stories concerning animal intelligence, and it mentioned a prosthetic project I had not heard of before, namely, a conference where a bunch of biologists and engineers worked together to develop a prosthetic arm based on the design of the octopus tentacle. A cool thing about octopus tentacles is that a significant portion of the octopus's neurons are in the tentacle itself, and the neurons may even be unique to each tentacle, so yes, the right tentacle may not know what the left tentacle is doing.

Anyway, I couldn't find any information on the project mentioned in the book, but I did find information about another project, this one designed by a female university student.
http://inventorspot.com/articles/prosthetic_arm_biomimics_arms_octopus

Kes: It would be great to find more stories like this, perhaps with people creating their own superheroes with disabilities.

From the Daily Bits Web site
http://www.dailybits.com/marvels-new-superhero-blue-ear-created-deaf-boy/#more-6625

block quote start
Anthony Smith is a four-year-old boy who has medical conditions, including total deafness in his right ear and some hearing loss in his left. He has been using a hearing aid, but as things go with little boys, he just suddenly didn’t want to wear the device anymore.

His reason?
Superheroes do not wear hearing aids.

Parenting perspectives aside, how do you argue with a little kid about superheroes not wearing hearing aids?

Fortunately, Anthony’s mom seems to be quick on the ball. After hearing her son reason his way out of wearing his hearing aid, she got in touch with the guys at Marvel Comics via e-mail. To be honest, I am actually surprised that they got back to her. Just imagine the volume of e-mails they must receive!

In any case, the Marvel’s response is brilliant. They sent back an image of Hawkeye, who suffers from 80% hearing loss. This was in reply to Anthony’s mom asking for an example of a superhero who uses a hearing aid.

It gets better. Marvel created a new superhero just for Anthony. They call him Blue Ear, and guess what? He is named after Anthony’s hearing aid, Blue Ear.
block quote end

Kes: lots of interesting examples of neuroprosthetics in this article, and the journalist actually tries out one of the non-invasive devices; I'll also point out that the Dept. of Defense funds most of these projects, not jus the one mentioned in the article.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/18/magazine/the-cyborg-in-us-all.html?_r=3&pagewanted=all

Kes: As mentioned in the note for this Instructable, this is really intended to be created by a person who is trained in creating prosthetics. An ill-formed proshetic can cause pain, infection, and even permanent damage, so use common sense when modding prosthetics--it's the most useful sense we have.
http://www.instructables.com/id/Plastic-Soda-Bottle-Prosthesis/

A friend pointed me to the ongoing conversation going on at Slate
"Debating Extreme Human Enhancement: Should We Use Nanotech, Genetics, Pharmaceuticals, and Augmentations To Go Above and Beyond Our Biology?"
http://www.slate.com/id/2303277/entry/2303278

I'm following it, but I'm finding it kind of...boring.

One reason is that very little in the conversation seems to have changed since I did piles of research for my thesis
http://www.blindbookworm.org/decloakingdisabilitycomplete.rtf
six years ago.

Probably the most interesting aspect to the conversation is that, similar to my thesis, science fiction media is being used --by a mainstream publication, no less-- to illustrate both sides of the argument.

Where the conversation totally fails for me is that it's both theoretical and talks about the tech as if it's in the future.

It's here and now, boys.

Anyone who adopts technologies to replace a missing or misfiring limb, sensory organ, or cognitive process,is perfectly aware of the pros and cons because we live with it every day.

We're not, as the "I don't want to be a cyborg" guy so pointedly refers to one of his fellow debaters, "an enthusiast." We're not passive adopters: we note the bugs and mod the designs constantly.

We're also not trying to enslave you into our cyborg revolution, thank you (and is it just me, or does anyone else find the title of that guy's book, _Liberal Eugenics_, to be something of an oxymoron? and he implies that the *cyborgs* are the ones like Daliks??)
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