Disability In SF Panel

[spacehawk.livejournal.com]

I agree with ambyr when she said,

"...what I'm really interested in isn't "extrapolating the future of disability through the lens of science fiction" (I am generally skeptical of "science fiction as a means of predicting the future"), but in what today's speculative fictional presentations of disabilities say about our current perceptions, and how speculative fiction can be used to hold up a mirror to ourselves and change the ways we see disability now."

Not a gee wiz panel about advances in medicine and technology. Did you know in the future, "disabled" people will instead have superpowers?

How about this not be the panel discussion.

This panel should be planned better next year and start from the "social model versus medical model" of disability as introduced into the conversation by tikva.

/huge thank you shout out to tikva./

Comments

[coridan.livejournal.com]

I found the panel interesting and informative, if touching on some hot button issues.I was also hoping that we'd also get around to some transhumanist discussion. I agree that medical versus social should have been the baseline of the panel discussion.

[sodyera.livejournal.com]

Not that I'm pushing, but you could suggest it to Lunacon, and then volunteer to be on panel. I did it last year.

[spacehawk.livejournal.com]

I'm not going to be able to make it Lunacon, but I'm happy to suggest it to the folks there (or at Arisia for next year).

[hnybny.livejournal.com]

The panel may have had a number of people in the audience who seemed to look to SF for potential advances (IE: The Geordi visor or cell phones), but I was on the Disability in SF panel and that was certainly not a point we set out to make.

At one point during the panel the moderator whispered that she thought the panel was being pulled off track by unrelated topics. Certain attendees did seem to monopolize the discussion, but that was not our intent.