The Accelerating Competition in the Bionic Hand Industry What is city talk?
The Emergence of Lower-Cost Devices
If you wanted to purchase a multi-articulating bionic hand in 2015, you would have had only a few mainstream options, all costing between $35,000 and $70,000 US for a complete solution.
Roll forward six years and at BionicsForEveryone.com we now list 14 bionic hands from 13 companies on our website, with another 5 devices likely to be added before the end of 2021. The lowest-priced hand on that list is currently $8,000. There are three more that sell for less than $18,000, and that includes a forearm socket and also prosthetist fees.
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We are often told how brand-new technology is changing humanity, but we rarely hear enough about how it is impacting individual humans. In December 2020 I joined a unique club of individuals who have been fitted with a 3D-printed bionic arm. The robotic arm is designed and manufactured by Bristol-based Open Bionics and mine was funded by Tej Kohli and the Tej Kohli Foundation, who have a mission to use technology to improve the lives of young people all over the world.
Prominent technologists like Elon Musk and Yuval Noah Harari have popularised the idea that human-robot augmentation is the next frontier in human evolution and evangelise the notion that it will elevate us beyond humans to become ‘super humans’. But what these predictions overlook is the way that human-robot bionics do not just augment physical abilities, but they can also elevate a user by giving them a platform to ‘change the conversation’.
Disney Is The Latest Company To Cut Jobs
February 23, 2021 18:52 GMT
Disney has retained its status as the largest entertainment company in the world after celebrating the success of its new Disney+ streaming service reaching 86 million subscribers. Disney plans to be spending $16 billion each year on content for Disney+ by 2024, when it hopes to have 260 million subscribers. But the story at its theme parks is very different.
Disney Is The Latest Company To Cut Jobs
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28,000 Employees To Be Laid Off
Disney has several theme parks located across the world including China, Hong Kong, France and Japan, as well as parks in California and Florida. In 2019 these theme parks cumulatively welcomed 155 million visitors, but during 2020 each of Disney s theme parks had to close at some point. Now Disney is counting the cost of these shutdowns.