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To Augment or Not to Augment? That is the Question

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Disability and Technology

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Abstract

The possibilities of technology to liberate, offer new social options but also to curtail and dehumanise are no more evident than in the following. The chapter title—to augment or not to augment—aims to capture the widespread enthusiasm for technologies of augmentation by non-users and clinicians, alongside a huge variety of responses from disabled people and their communities. The following will explore these complex dynamics by looking at three technologies: the cochlear implant (CI), the prosthesis and limb exoskeletons. The term ‘augmentation’ is useful here as it is at once a technical appraisal of an addition or replacement (Chaur et al. 2006; Rapee et al. 2007), but it is also contested as it carries with it a notion of enhancement, bodily betterment and a greater human entity—which is at the heart of the contention over the need for and drivers of augmentative technologies (Starner et al. 1997; Salminen 2001; Salminen et al. 2004). The tension between these very different worldviews is nowhere more plain than in the discussion of CIs. Implants in sensorineural hearing loss (or hearing absence from birth) are perhaps one of the most powerful examples of neurological extension and enhancement to have been witnessed in the twentieth century. However, these developments have sparked one of the fiercest bioethical debates around the intersection of technology, d/Deafness and culture. The narrative of rescue is evident in some, though not all, clinical representations of the benefits of CIs, some going back to earlier social stereotypes of rescue and deafness, as here in the case of Wilson and Dorman who alight on key historic figures. The title of their work ‘Cochlear Implants: A Remarkable Past and a Brilliant Future’ provides obvious clues as to their worldview on CIs:

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  1. School of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK

    Alan Roulstone

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Roulstone, A. (2016). To Augment or Not to Augment? That is the Question. In: Disability and Technology. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-45042-5_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-45042-5_7

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