Why prosthetics should be beautiful

I have never liked faux home building materials -- linoleum tiles made to look sort of like stone, Countertops with granite prints, and wood-patterned vinyl windows. There's just something dishonest about them that makes them aesthetically unappealing.

I'm missing a leg, and I don't think I would want a cosmesis (a shell that looks skin-like) for the same reasons. It's much less creepy to have, in my case, a black carbon fiber socket than a sorta skin-like covering. It's not trying to be something that it's not. Perhaps I'd feel different if I was missing an arm, but the quotes from the article implied similar feelings.

What interests me is what designs might emerge if the implicit requirement that a prosthetic foot look like a real foot was removed. Would it be better to have a carbon fiber heel stick out way behind where my real heel should be? Would this allow for a more efficient (note that I didn't say "natural") gait? What if the spring extended outward and up like an elf's foot? The only devices for which these rules have been relaxed are feet worn by amputee athletes (mostly runners). I suppose these rules are in place mostly due to economics; the same foot designs must be used by both those who care about looking like a normal person and those who don't. So, designers work in the space provided by the union of all restrictions.

From the article:

"I heard amputees say they sometimes didn't wear a prosthetic hand at all, because what they feared when they did wear one - one that was a very good disguise - was that moment when the people they were speaking to for the first time realized that it was artificial. Some of them said they'd actually like to get that moment over and done with at the very beginning, and would welcome a hand that was obviously not a human hand, but had other good qualities."

I wonder if Pullin was referring to the repulsion that humans can feel towards something as it approaches a more humanistic state. This is otherwise known as the Uncanny Valley hypothesis

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley

His assertion towards eyeglasses shortly after seems to reinforce this fact. (edit: sorry, not fact - concept)

I'd be keen to see how people's reactions to prosthetics would change if the need to have them look human-like was removed. Get some top industrial design talent onto it... perhaps see if someone can convince some design guys from Apple to do some pro-bono designs.

For some examples of high-quality prosthetics, watch the two TED talks of Aimee Mullins:

http://www.ted.com/talks/aimee_mullins_prosthetic_aesthetics...

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/aimee_mullins_on_running....

My brother in law is probably single-handedly introducing a new wave of innovation into the Japanese prosthetics market and he's doing in YC style, living on very little income and iterating quickly on new designs. His work is truly beautiful and he's already come up with one of the most remarkable socket systems to be developed in the last 50 or so years. He's been in business for less than a year.

It's really great to watch a new startup in a country not exactly known for single-founder success stories, especially outside the IT world.