Wired is running an essay commemorating Stephen Hawking’s 71st birthday that imagines him as the center of a human-machine distributed network. The essay’s hypothesis is that how Hawking lives his life is increasingly reflective of how the rest of us live. Most of us use some kind of machinery to organize information, communicate with others, and get from Point A to Point B. Hawking simply uses atypical interfaces (a wheelchair, a talking computer, a nurse) that are foreign to most people. From the essay:
Hawking’s persona, his disability, and his embodied network thus becomes a window on our machines, the nature of work, and even our representation of scientific heroes. Popular media shows us that Hawking is a pure, isolated, once-in-a-lifetime genius; ethnographic analysis shows us that Hawking is not that different from other scientists even though he has a disability. In fact, it’s precisely because of his disability that we get to see how all scientists work … and how the entire world will work one day.
In other words, assistive technology neutralizes, to some extent, the barriers between disability and achievement.
Of course, Hawking’s fancy distributed network won’t mean jack when we finally face off in our zero-g deathmatch. I’ve got (relative) youth on my side and a killer left hook. Distribute that, Hawking.
