A couple of friends sent me things that they thought I'd enjoy this week, and both of them are worth sharing. The first was a quote from a student who is halfway through their final year of study and in the middle of a long block of clinical practice. They were reflecting on their work. They wrote: “Sometimes I feel it can be hard to take off my "physio thinking hat" and put on my human thinking hat.” We should perhaps have a moment's silence just to reflect on that. The second was a paper from 2004 that highlighted the virtues of looking at the obvious and familiar in new ways. The paper is titled Culture on the ground: The World Perceived Through the Feet (link to the full … [Read more...] about Taking off your ‘physio’ head
A pill to make you a better physio
There’s been a lot of talk recently about the way we may be able to transform ourselves as humans in the not-too-distant future. The trans-humanism movement is gaining momentum, with some people writing about a future where people will be able to take a pill to make themselves vastly more intelligent, or unlock the possibility of unlimited memory. Others are talking about never again growing old and using robotics and prosthetics to vastly enhance our physical capabilities. In the latter case proponents ask why should we restrict ourselves to adaptive devices only when we become ill? And then why should those adaptive devices only seek to mimic so called ’normal’ activity? What if, … [Read more...] about A pill to make you a better physio
Bodies-as-machines / post-humans / skull-candy
What would it be like to have a device osteointegrated into your skull to convert light into sound? Well now you can find out. There has been a lot of discussion of cyborg culture over the years and this piece from Sally Davis in the gorgeous on-line magazine/blog Nautilus (http://nautil.us/) is well worth a read. Cyborgs and the culture of the post-human is nothing new of course. In many ways physiotherapists have been involved for years in aids and adaptations that help people move and function. The key difference here is that post-human culture is getting people to move their thinking away from the use of technologies as adaptations to make up for some sort of loss, to … [Read more...] about Bodies-as-machines / post-humans / skull-candy