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Is the Bionic-Hand Arms Race Leaving Behind the Disabled People it’s Meant to Help?

KQED's Forum

KQED

News Commentary, News, Politics

4.2727 Ratings

🗓️ 30 August 2022

⏱️ 57 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

When writer Britt Young, who was born without most of her left forearm, got an expensive, high tech myoelectric prosthetic four years ago she was so excited she threw an “arm party”. But the prosthetic was heavy and hard to use and she hardly ever put it on again. In an article in IEEE Spectrum, Young says the media and the tech world have been seduced by whiz-bang prosthetic technology at the expense of what most disabled people really need: access, reliability and affordability. “We are caught in a bionic-hand arms race” she writes “It’s time to ask who prostheses are really for, and what we hope they will actually accomplish.” Guests: Britt H Young, writer, "The Bionic-Hand Arms Race" in IEEE; PhD candidate in Geography, UC Berkeley Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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1:09.5

From KQED. From KQED. From KQED in San Francisco, I'm Alexis Madrigal.

1:24.6

There's a popular genre video on the internet.

1:26.6

It features a disabled person getting a new prosthetic arm or leg, often with great excitement.

1:32.6

But tech and disability writer Britt Young argues that these videos don't show whether the

1:36.8

devices are actually useful and what happens in the weeks and months after the unboxing.

1:42.5

Unfortunately, these bionic components can be all futurism, no function, as Young herself

1:47.5

has discovered.

1:48.8

So we're going to spend the hour talking about the reality underlying the whiz-bang of

1:53.0

high-tech prosthetics, the ways disabled people's experiences are ignored, and how it might

1:57.9

be that our society, as much as any product is what actually

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