Andrea: "'Cyborg Cool' Versus 'Crip Pity'"
Andrea, from Andrea’s Buzzing About, writes a right-on and entertaining post on the silliness of our society’s attitudes. She notes the irony in how the same technology can viewed as “cool” for one person while at the same time distinctly uncool for another
person. In our conspicuous consumption but disability-adverse culture, we want the world to see our brightly colored Bluetooth ear piece but not our sickly beige hearing aid earpiece.
Description of pictures: one picture shows a fancy bronze colored Nokia Bluetooth earpiece with an engraved design and the other picture shows five bland beige Siemens Phoenix hearing aids.
6 comments:
http://www.textually.org/textually/archives/2005/07/009223.htm
http://hearingmojo.com/blog-mt/blog-mt/2006/04/whats_elvas_its_the_longawaite.html
these are kinda cool...
My 11 year old does away with the boring tan and decorates her hearing aids with stick-on diamonds and flowers whenever the mood strikes!
Thanks for your links, Natalia. Those hearing aids look cool!
Karen, it’s nice that your daughter feels comfortable enough with her hearing aid to make it look personal and beautiful. It's important for children with disabilities to feel comfortable with their equipment, and it's great to be able to make it look cool also.
to Karen's daughter: D.I.Y. ROCKS!!!
oh man i should have read andrea's post before posting those links becos she shows some even cooler looking hearing aids. wow. any lazy browsers like me should go read the article and look at the links near the end. and she makes a good point, too. as a certified (or is that certifiable?) gadget freak i hope that soon all kinds of assistive tech can become cool and exist in exciting variations.
The way we customise an object makes it our own - particularly important when approaching the blandness and impersonal nature of health aids/products.
I have been inspired by this to tie ribbons off the back of my very ugly perching stool so the cat can play with them.
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