ASSISTED

Sara Hendren
ESTRANGEMENT
“‘Assistive technology’ implies a
separate species of tools designed
exclusively for those people with a
rather narrow set of diagnostic
‘impairments’—impairments, in other
words, that have been culturally
designated as needing special
attention, as being particularly,
grossly abnormal.”

“All Technology is Assistive”

“All people, over the
course of their lives,
traffic between times of
relative independence
and dependence.”

“All Technology is Assistive”

“We’re all getting all kinds of
help from the things we
make. All kinds of help, all
the time, for our many
material and social and
educational and political
needs.”

“All Technology is Assistive”

This TED Talk by
investigative
reporter David
E p s t e i n
resonates with
H e n d re n ’s
argument. It
likewise works
through data
visualization akin
to what one
fi n d s i n a n
infographic. Jesse Owens runs at the Olympic Games in Berlin in 1936.
“People with disabilities have a long
history of decisions being made for
them and things being done to them,
so they are our richest source of
knowledge about how to become a
cyborg with wits intact, and they can
help researchers change the questions
about what technology should afford
us” (57)

“Towards an Ethics of Estrangement”

“Instead of posing ‘solutions’
to ‘problems,’ interrogative
and estranging tools ask
whether we are asking the
right questions in the first
place” (62).

“Towards an Ethics of Estrangement”

“I mean, rather, speculative and
practical technologies that upend
all our expectations about what
‘assistive aids’ should do, who
they are for, and how mysterious
and often invisible the whole
economy of human needs really
is” (62).

“Towards an Ethics of Estrangement”