DailyDirt: Six Million Dollar Man People
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
Science fiction about bionics grossly underestimated how much advanced prosthetics actually cost to develop. The Six Million Dollar Man was off by at least a couple orders of magnitude. But bionic limbs have been getting a lot better over the years, and more Paralympic athletes are becoming famous for their achievements all the time. Here are just a few inspiring links about people and technology making awesome advances in bionics.- Aimee Mullins has turned her prosthetic legs into a possibly desirable advantage -- prosthetics can make people taller and potentially super-abled instead of disabled. Mullins is a a champion sprinter in the Paralympics, and she has over a dozen different prosthetic legs -- and is having fun with the improving technologies of prosthetic limbs. [url]
- This American Life covered how people can totally miss seeing a one-armed woman. Mary Archbold is a professional dancer who has become incredibly good at concealing her missing appendage. [url]
- An exoskeleton called eLegs was developed with some Pentagon funding and could sell to the general public for about $50,000. Bionics are getting cheaper, but they're not quite ready to make anyone into Iron Man just yet. [url]
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: aimee mullins, bionics, exoskeleton, mary archbold, paralympics, prosthetics
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
One-armed woman
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]