Artificial Limbs Are Beautiful

This week we talked about limb transplants at class as well as how medicine was formed as a profession. Seemingly untouchable, stuck in a strict hierarchy, I think medicine likes staying the way it is since it is able to accumulate so much power within the society.

I suggested that the high cost of some medical services are definitely intentional. Not enough investment is put to make cheaper, smaller and more efficient medical instruments. The performance of a computer has more than ten folded, its capacity has multiplied thousands of times, they can fit your palm and are extremely cheap (compared to million dollar machines in the 70s, for further information of the advancement of technology, please check out Ray Kurzweil's book "The Singularity is Near"). Technology has developed so much, but why have medical machines not become cheaper/smaller/more accessible? Why don't we have medical home appliances? We could easily have them.

I think the 3D printer has changed a lot of rules in the game. We're able to print out toys already, and 3D printers are going to get cheaper. We ARE going to print out anything we want (we will be able to download the pattern of whichever item we like from some online shops like iTunes), and presto. We'll have appliances, hairbrushes, toothbrushes, toys, gadgets, gizmos printed out from our 3D printer. Can't wait to have one! It sounds sci-fi right? But if we told someone that we'd be downloading music into our devices to someone 30 years ago, they'd call us a dreamer.

Anyways, I think limb transplants are absolutely unnecessary procedures. You get to have very functional ARTIFICIAL SUPER, AWESOME, COOL LOOKING, CYBORG limbs for relatively cheap now. WHY on earth would anyone want a limb that would not function?!

Ok check this out people. There are tons of artificial limb TED talks that are very interesting. But these two are my favorites. Meet Aimee Mullins. She gives her personal story about artificial limbs and the way the world's perspective has changed towards different bodies. I also share Scott Summit's talk, from a designer's perspective. The second one's first 3-5 minutes are not as interesting in his talk but I keep getting goosebumps towards the end. To watch the second video please click here. (Apparently there's some copyright issues and I can't put the second vid on the blog).