Oh, that's interesting.

After the London Olympics a few years ago I wrote this post about the use of prosthetics in the Paralympics, and how it's pretty clear they can now outperform natural human limbs in certain circumstances. In the wake of that I got chatting to Someone Who Knows These Things who told me that the thing which has really driven the improvement of prosthetic technology has been wider medical advances, specifically in battlefield medicine in Iraq and Afghanistan. Soldiers who twenty or thirty years ago would have been killed by injuries are now being saved but with lost limbs, and this has created pressure in the development of artificial limbs. That got me onto the idea that as artificial limb technology improves at some point in the future they will become electives and that the world is going to be a dashed peculiar place for those of us who'll be old when that happens.

Anyway, over the weekend I saw this:

It's interesting in a way that Channel Four often isn't; their Gay Mountain skit was funny but not especially groundbreaking. I've seen prosthetics used in a fashion accessory sense before now but never so overtly or as the forefront of of the media campaign (I also can't help but think that the design of that spike leg owes something to the artwork of Dr. Geof) but as soon as this sort of thing happens you can't help but look at it and think "Yeah, that was inevitable, now I come to think of it".

I find these sorts of things an interesting glimpse into the future of some parts of society.