Critical Analysis: Conceiving Thoughts of Cowan

     

    Cowan would call bionic contact lenses a technology that produces a medicalization for the wealthy.  Bionic contact lenses exacerbate the social divide that they impose by only being available to the wealthy who can afford to purchase the highly expensive innovative technology. Thus, the wealthy would only benefit from the effects of this technology, which further segregates the rich and the poor access to health benefits. In addition to exacerbating the social class divide, the identity this technology produces also exacerbates the racial divide by being highly available to high-class white citizens and less available to low-class immigrants or ethnic minorities who can barely afford their normal health care. These aspects of identity are written into the design of bionic contact lenses.

     Bionic contact lenses also change the way humans are able to do work. For instance, the job of a pilot or soldier would change drastically with this technology in producing the ability to see graphics in their eye or being able to visually zoom in across spaces to spot enemies. This technology would significantly change how human beings perform their roles in society and abilities within. This technology produces a super human being who would then be expected to perform roles at a higher level, thus disadvantaging those who did not possess this technology in the job market. It would result in a high rate of unemployment for those low-class immigrant or ethnic minorities that are unable to obtain this technology, further exacerbating the social class and race divide. Bionic contact lenses would normalize these super human abilities provided, thus would alter the definition of the natural standard of behavior for human beings. The human identity the bionic contact lens imposes exacerbates the social and race divide by creating another barrier for those who do not have access to this expensive technology. The social identity pursued is one of extreme productivity and superhuman abilities, which may be unrealistic to achieve. The advanced abilities that come with bionic contact lenses would increase human beings amount of work as well, similar to how the computers advancement of abilities in the work place lead to an increase in the expected amount of work to be executed.