I’m off shortly to hear Stephen King and Audrey Neffineger give a talk at the Fitzgerald. I’m bummed that I don’t have my old unabridged copy of The Stand for King to sign, but I’ll bring my copy of Under the Dome. It’s a ginormous book and could probably cause serious physical harm if placed in the wrong hands. But Kindle versions don’t really lend themselves to being signed.

The blogosphere got a case of the vapors yesterday when longtime blogger Belle de Jour voluntarily relinquished her anonymity and revealed herself to be both pretty and geeky,complete with a Ph.D. in informatics, epidemiology, and forensic science. Belle (a.k.a Brooke Magnanti) was one of the first bloggers to achieve celebrity status based purely on the content of her blog postings (in Belle’s case, she blogged about her experiences as a London escort). She parlayed her blog’s popularity into book and television deals, thus earning the envy and ire of all us amateurs pecking away at our keyboards as visions of literary contracts danced before our eyes.

Some might argue that Magnanti, with her middle-class background and advanced education, isn’t typical of the women who earn a living as sex workers. They may be right. It’s even possible that she’s perpetuating a long con on a public who subconsciously wants to accept commercial sex as long as it’s nonthreateningly packaged as an attractive and seemingly well-adjusted woman with an English accent and a completed dissertation. But she might just be someone who blogged about an interesting and unusual time in her life and now wants to reclaim her identity. I hope it works out for her.

Assitive technology is sometimes developed in corporate R&D labs and then marketed to the general public. The Intel Reader, a new device that scans printed text and converts it into speech for users with visual impairments, is a good example. Intel probably spent a considerable amount of time and money developing this device, but a list price of $1,500 is still out of reach for a lot of people.

That’s why it’s encouraging to see development of homebrew, low-cost assistive technology like the EyeWriter. The EyeWriter uses off-the-shelf parts and open-source software to enable artists with physical disabilities to draw and sketch using only eye movement. Here’s a video showing the Eyewriter being used by Tony Quan, a graffiti artist with ALS:

It would be great to see big corporations like Intel supporting some of these community efforts to produce affordable assistive technology that can dramatically improve lives. As I’ve said before, proprietary devices will always be needed, but I think the market is big enough to accommodate options at both the high and low end.

Thanks to BoingBoing for the tip on the EyeWriter.

Everyone needs to go read Aimee Mullins’ terrific essay at tech blog Gizmodo on disability, prosthetics, sports, and the thin line between competitive advantage and “unfair” advantage. Recalling the hue and cry surrounding fellow athlete and amputee Oscar Pistorius when he petitioned to compete in the Olympics after successfully competing against other able-bodied athletes in world competition, Aimee points out that the Cheetah prosthetic leg used by both her and Pistorius is not exactly new technology. As with most pieces of technology, it’s the user that makes the difference, not the technology itself.

Mullins then compares the hand-wringing that greeted Pistorius’ Olympic bid to the more enthusiastic reception that new aquadynamic swimsuits received in the Beijing Olympics. Those suits enabled swimmers to break all kinds of records, but the press couldn’t stop breathlessly commenting on their gee-whiz factor. She also comments on Tiger Woods’ remarkable winning streak following his first LASIK surgery (he later had a second).

It seems to all come down to concepts of bodily integrity. Sports fans don’t have a problem with fancy swimsuits, LASIK surgeries, or even performance-enhancing substances because, in the end, the athletes are still competing with their own arms and legs. In other words, they look human. But slap on a pair of prosthetics and the fans get a little queasy, even if they can’t articulate why. The “otherness”, cosmetic as it may be, is enough to take people aback. But when the “other” starts kicking the asses of nominally able-bodied athletes, panic ensues.

Mullins conclude with a glimpse into the future. She contemplates the consequences of prosthetics that can be programmed to function within the limits of human performance. She writes:

The chip used in a prosthetic that will dictate “acceptable human” metric-based output is what will be allowed in the Olympic standard; meanwhile, the Paralympics will be no holds barred. In an ironic, amazing cultural flip, you will see runners in the Paralympics going faster than those in the Olympics. Now won’t that be an interesting comment on “dis”ability?

Amazon just released the PC version of its Kindle reader. Of course, I downloaded it as soon as I saw the news and purchased three Kindle books (a couple mystery/thrillers that had been sitting on my wishlist for a few years as well as Ian Banks’ Transition). The software is still in beta, so it doesn’t have many frills. Text can be re-sized and navigation is pretty straightforward. If you made notes or highlighted passages on a Kindle device, those can be synched with the PC version. Unfortunately, you can’t highlight or annotate text in the PC version (although Amazon hints that might change in the near future).

I don’t plan to stop buying physical books and I’m still waiting for an accessible e-reader that won’t chain me to my desk, but I also like not having to wait for someone to turn the pages or having to flatten book bindings so I can read the margins. This will likely be a tide-me-over technology, but I’ll gladly take it.