Olympic Games will soon be outdone by Paralympic Games

Wes — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 20:09:01 +0000

In Italy, a successful experiment by a team of European scientists enabled a man who had lost his arm in an accident to control a computerized robotic arm attached to his neural network through several electrodes, which translated his thoughts into motions. The experiment, called LifeHand, was the longest length of time that a human has been connected to such electrodes and has increased the odds that full range-of-motion prosthetic limbs will be available in the near future. It was also done for a relatively modest $3 million dollars. When considering that repairs to another experimental technology, the CERN Hadron collider cost $40 million Euros and the collider itself cost just shy of $5 billion! the LifeHand experiment has more comparative bang for its buck at this point (No pun intended). It’s an important development in the challenge to create a viable interface between the nervous system and prosthetic limbs, but in order to have full utility the technology needs to be proven over a substantially longer temporal scale; years, even decades. So, because all we in Vancouver ever talk about lately are the Winter Olympics I’d like to ask what the implications of technology like this are for the future of our Paralympic Games?

There are other technologies that have already called into question whether being “disabled” in fact opens the door to gaining an unfair advantage through supplemental technologies like runner Oscar Pistorious’ prosthetic legs, which have coined him the nickaname “Blade Runner” and also had him disqualified from the Olympics for being too fast. Incidentally, Oscar’s uncle Jaco Pastorious was also given an unfair advantage over all other bass players through his prosthetic rubber-fiberglass fingers; making him undoubtably the world’s greatest bass player as his own website attests to. (ed. That last thing about Jacko Pastorious is unconfirmed- but highly likely) But Canadians are very unforgiving towards use of performance enhancing drugs in sport. According to a recent Montreal Gazette article 93% of all Canadians feel that penalties should be stricter for athletes found to have used performance enhancing drugs…but what about performance enhancing technology in the Paralympic games? Could this become an ethical conundrum down the road? If it doesn’t I’m prepared to say that most of the speed, strength and other records set by humans will be broken predominantly by those labeled as being at a disadvantage.

If the materials and technologies that we use to replace lost appendages continue to advance to the point where artificial legs make us run faster, and artificial arms help us throw faster, lift more and hit harder, then one can only imagine that the Paralympics will be the more exciting and “extreme” and therefore the more popular and watched of the Olympics. Pistorious is the manifestation of that now, while LifeHand represents the further potential of this reality moving forward.

I can see my great grandchildren now, complaining to their friends about how the outrageously expensive tickets to the 2080 Vancouver Summer Olympic, Paralympic and Cyborg Games were all bought up by corporate sponsors and the government. Though neural prosthetic limbs and other technologies will undoubtedly change, some things probably never will.

Senses: A blog about the Thirdi Software perception » Paralympic Games

Olympic Games will soon be outdone by Paralympic Games