superhuman

        This collection of prothesis were made of metal and wood which look quite heavy and ponderous. The structure of the prothetic limbs are extremely simple and unscientific. Saddle- like part was designed to support the buttocks, and obviously it looks rather hard and uncomfortable. Moreover, there's unexpectedly no joint sections, especially the very important knee joint. Instead, tow pieces of iron or wood replace all the bones between buttocks and ankles. As for the feet that will show out after wearing pants, they were all made with a pair of nice shoes which makes the prothesis looks realistic.  
       these prothesis were designed and made for those poor children who were suffered from the disaster of abusing thalidomide. They were born with malformation of the limbs. In response to this tragic disaster, the UK government of that time decided to design and produce a series of prothesis in order to allow those children behave an be treated as normal people.
      In the video playing beside the collection, a girl with shorten arms and legs was struggling putting off a pair of prothetic legs. The first scene showed off how the prothesis worked. She walked slowly into a room on her prothesis. With extremely stiff movement, she looked rather like a robot that lack for lubricant. An even harder situation was that without the help of crutches she was still unable to walk! Then in the next 15 minutes, she continually straggled moving herself from the prothesis into a wheelchair. Again the crugches played an important part in the whole process, helping her turning almost every pieces. Compared with this, the prothesis was really useless.
     So people may wonder what was exact the purpose of making such a useless prothesis. First of all, there's no doubt that they were not made to recover those children's physical problem. This is quite clear from features mentioned above, like no structure of knee joint, simple and crude design, helplessness in walking, etc. Indeed , they had less connection in medical realms than in social terms. That brings us back to a social problem about disabled people. It's true that we've got sorts of equipments or policies in order to make their lives easier, but there are still lots of unfair treatments happen everyday. For instance, you can't find stairs accompanied with lift everywhere which means it's still impossible for disabilities to go out wherever they want.  Generally, when a programme is built, people only follow the principle rule of adding incline alongside the stairs as they treat disabilities well which is obviously unilateral. As Gleeson(2002) described"the 'thoughtless design' advocates share the enthusiasm of 'natural limits' proponents for environmental modifications to buildings, access routes and transport systems, as well as the provision of sophisticated adaptive technologies, though the two perspectives differ markedly on why these technologies are needed." Back to the debate of 'normal people', what exactly do we mean by 'normal'? It's frequently not the disabilities who want to be normal but the rest people, who suppose that they can help them back to be normal only by a few ostensible methods. Brisenden(1986) pointed out a view of treatment and mind, "in order to understand disability as an experience, as a lived thing, we need more than the medical 'fact'... the problem comes when hey determine not only the form treatment (if the treatment is appropriate), but also the form of life for the person who happens to be disabled." As the development of science, it is essential to make good use of new technology instead of producing "thoughtless technology". New technology should be used on serving disabilities rather than covering their defects nor pretending to be 'normal'.

Bibliography:
Brisenden, S.(1986) 'Independent living and the medical model of disability', Disability, Handicap and society 1,2 : 6-13

Butler, R & Parr, H, ed. 'Mind and body spaces geographies of illness, impairment and disability', London: The centre for learning and teaching in art and design. 2002