New Legs and Old Skills

• In Event: Replaceable Parts: Prosthetic Technologies in Biomedicine

Abstract

New prosthetic leg and arm technologies – like limb scanning casting, osteointegration, new feet, 3D printing applications, and more – provide prothetists with powerful new tools. While heralded as life-enhancing and revolutionary, new developments in “bionics” move away from established skills prosthetists have and change practice for amputees, technicians, and prosthetists. While these changes aren't necessarily bad, the image of new prosthetics differs radically from what the majority of amputees encounter. In line with Melvin Kranzberg's well-known “technology is neither good nor bad, nor is it neutral,” I offer an account of hype vs. reality for amputees and prosthetist. With new legs (and arms), we lose old skills, and these changes matter to the people for whom this technology is supposedly aimed, what the public makes of the technology (and the pressures that get put on amputees from this understanding), and how practice is constructed in the face of technological change.

Author

• Ashley Shew, Virginia Tech