Cyborgs, warriors and live shields. Critical technology studies as a research frame of disability discourses

Abstract

This article presents and discusses results of empirical research on cultural connection of technology and disability. This study, using qualitative approach, aims at the tracing of discursive paths, main categories and ethical dilemmas expressed by users of social media and internet forums. The results shows the conceptual problem of line-drawing between promoting rights of access to technologies that provide equal opportunity and increasing concerns about what it means to be human, and, in particular, in what distinguishes people from machines. These concerns have clear resonance with anxieties about disability, and with disabled people being seen as not human.