Exoskeleton Helps UCB Student Walk for Graduation: Disability Justice or Cyborg Fantasy?

On May 14, Austin Whitney walked across the stage to receive his diploma from UC Berkeley. Whitney is a paraplegic but was able to walk with the help of the “Austin” exoskeleton, a robotic suit being developed by Professor Homayoon Kazerooni at UC Berkeley’s Robotics and Human Engineering Laboratory. The story has been widely covered by the media, as tales of high-tech gadgets for people with disabilities often are. But we need to pause and consider what it means, for people with disabilities and for prospects of human enhancement, to celebrate a device such as this. Whitney’s walk across stage prompted a standing ovation, but what exactly was being applauded?

The coverage of Whitney’s walk relied on clichés that the disability rights movement has been working to avoid. We are meant to be moved to tears by a paraplegic functioning like a “normal person” again, rather than being encouraged to question whether crossing the stage in a wheelchair would really be a lesser accomplishment - especially considering the many obstacles that face disabled students even at UCB, a birthplace of disability rights.

Whitney likes the exoskeleton. “Ask anybody in a wheelchair, ask what it would mean to once again stand and shake someone’s hand while facing them at eye level,” he said. But from a disability justice perspective, high-tech robotics aren’t necessary to shake someone’s hand at eye level, when an able-bodied person can simply bend over.

Much like the exoskeleton, a recent invention called the iBOT mobility system promised to revolutionize the experience of people with disabilities. The iBOT could climb stairs and elevate in height so that wheelchair users could look someone in the eye. But it never attracted many users and has gone off the market (though its by-product the Segway has had some success as an entertainment for able-bodied people).  

Many people with disabilities are not looking for high-tech robotic devices, either because they would be uncomfortable using them, preferring something more practical, or because they prioritize other sorts of technologies – an elevator, for example – with a broader scope than the impaired, individual body.  The fact is, people with disabilities already have limited access to the very basic assistive technologies they need. The exoskeleton lead inventor Kazerooni says he wants to “bring the technology to the masses,” but this outcome is unlikely, and perhaps undesirable in the first place.

Celebrations of disabled bodies fused with technology are also troubling on another score. They often serve as a jumping-off point to make us more comfortable with controversial enhancements aimed at all bodies, able and disabled. The exoskeleton, for example, was not originally aimed helping the disabled community – that is a byproduct. With funding from Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), earlier protoypes were developed to allow combat soldiers to carry heavier loads and walk longer distances. Soldiers, like people with disabilities, have long been seen as forerunners in human enhancement, as what Chris Hables Gray calls “cyborg warriors.”

For transhumanists, the pathway towards the posthuman starts with soldiers, moves on to people with disabilities, and then opens up to the wider public. A few high-profile people with disabilities, such as Christopher Reeve and John Hockenberry, have personally suggested that people with disabilities are already posthuman. Reeve, for example, was not much concerned with issues of disability access or discrimination; he just wanted to walk again.

The Graduation Day exoskeleton story was a celebration of cyborg technologies. But the underlying story is far more complex, raising questions about normalcy, enhancement, and the unfinished battles for disability access and equality.

Previously on Biopolitical Times:

• Sarah Palin, Down syndrome, and the abortion debate
• Isn't It Time to Focus on the Real Future?
• The futures that don't need us, that didn't happen, and that we should avoid