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]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

Filed Under: aimee mullins, bionics, exoskeleton, mary archbold, paralympics, prosthetics