Advanced Prosthetics Redefine the Body

April 21, 2009 — -- Technology usually changes the way we do things.

We communicate and think differently because of computers. We live differently because planes, trains and automobiles let us travel with ease. We solve hard math problems and physics mysteries because computers let us crunch numbers on a previously impossible scale. The list goes on.

However, every so often -- actually much more often than we, at first, recognize -- technology also upends the way we think about elements of our everyday lives.

As the eloquent, thought-provoking, exceptional leader Aimee Mullins explains in a presentation earlier this year at the Technology, Education and Design (or TED) conference in Long Beach, Calif., scientists designing high-end prosthetics are close to enabling wearers with "super powers."

Advances in prosthetic technology -- and art -- have both expanded the opportunities and enhanced the abilities of those who require them. These dramatic changes are flipping assumptions long-held by the rest of us upside down.

Sometimes, it's difficult to determine whether a change in our collective thinking pushed an optimistic individual or team to test previous technical limits, or whether it worked the other way around.

But in both that brief talk and our follow-up conversation, the actor, athlete and advocate Mullins propelled the conversation on exceptional performance by talking about her own experience with prosthetic legs.

While the issue is actually much larger, contemplating athletic advantage is a fine place to start.

As we learned playing tag in kindergarten, athletic prowess is not evenly distributed; we saw on day one that some kids could run faster and farther than others. Those lucky ducks were destined to be the first chosen for every team, probably throughout their entire game-playing lives. Most of us have been envious of those athletes at one time or another.

Then there was a second group, those who sat on the sidelines during gym class because of physical differences they were born with or that came about as a result of illness or mishap. We were definitely not envious of those folks.

Now let's throw technology -- in the form of advanced materials science, electrical engineering and the Internet -- at the problem. What emerges are several organizations that take prosthetics to the next level.

Standout organizations include the Reykjavik, Iceland-based Ossur, the Hampshire, U.K.-based Dorset Orthopaedic and Hugh Herr's biomechatronics lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab. To use Ossur's words, they are "in the business of improving people's mobility."