I now have a photo account at flickr.com. Check out my latest photos from the 2005 Endeavor Games in Oklahoma! Thanks to Randy for sharing these photos.
My Photos on flickr.com
On another note, Xeni Jardin over at
Boing Boing just posted a note about my article in the NY Times. Thanks Xeni!
Robo-legsXeni Jardin, Boing Boing
Thanks to everyone who has been viewing my flickr photos, making comments and adding me as a contact. I'm out of town right now, but will try to respond and add more photos when I return.
BLOND and buff, Cameron Clapp is a teenage star.
Dressed fashionably in a faded T-shirt, baggy shorts and sneakers, he recently strolled the crowded sidewalks of Times Square. He walked confidently, flashing the megawatt smile that brightens his Web site and various photographs in newspapers and magazines that have chronicled his story as he travels the country.
Few, if any, of the onlookers had little idea that he is the poster manchild of a new generation of people who are not only embracing all types of breakthrough technologies but also incorporating them into their bodies.
For people who see Cameron Clapp for the first time, he is an object of wonderment: a young man walking and talking tall on shiny robotic legs.
"I make it look easy," said Mr. Clapp, who is 19 and still shows flickers of the cocky skater boy he was before he became what he calls "a severe case."
Mr. Clapp lost both his legs above the knee and his right arm just short of his shoulder after falling onto train tracks almost five years ago near his home in Grover Beach, Calif. After years of rehabilitation and trying a series of prosthetics, each more technologically sophisticated than the last, he finally found his legs.
"I do have a lot of motivation and self-esteem," Mr. Clapp said, "but I might look at myself differently if technology was not on my side." In the last few years, technology has definitely been on his side, in the form of the C-Leg. Introduced by Otto Bock HealthCare, a German company that makes advanced prosthetics, the C-Leg combines computer technology with hydraulics. It literally does the walking for the walker.
Blazing advancements, including lightweight composite materials, keener sensors and tiny programmable microprocessors are restoring remarkable degrees of mobility to amputees, said William Hanson, president of Liberating Technologies Inc., a company in Holliston, Mass., that specializes in developing and distributing advanced (rather than the more conventional kind) prosthetic arms and hands. Statistics show that more than twice as many men as women are amputees.
But something more subtle, and possibly far reaching, is also occurring, some technologists say.
The line that has long separated human beings from the machines that assist them is blurring as complex technologies become a visible part of people who depend upon them. Unlike pacemakers and fabricated heart valves that are embedded in the body, these technologies are, so to speak, worn on their users' sleeves.
Increasingly, amputees, especially young men like Mr. Clapp, and soldiers who have lost limbs in Afghanistan and Iraq, are choosing not to hide their prosthetics under clothing as previous generations did. Instead, some of the estimated 1.2 million amputees in the United States proudly polish and decorate their electronic limbs for all to see.
Read entire article here to learn more about Cameron, the latest in prothetics technology and about other inspiring amputees such as Nick Springer:
Robo-LegsThe New York Times, Michel Marriott
Cameron running the 200 in Oklahoma at the Endeavor Games - July 11, 2005.
