Published in August 2001, The Next Brainiacs is one of my all time favourite Wired articles. It has a healthy dose of the most gleeful techno-optimism combined with a deliciously counter-intuitive argument — that disabled people are ahead of the curve.

When you think disability, think zeitgeist. I’m serious. We live at a time when the disabled are on the leading edge of a broader societal trend toward the use of assistive technology. With the advent of miniature wireless tech, electronic gadgets have stepped up their invasion of the body, and our concept of what it means and even looks like to be human is wide open to debate. Humanity’s specs are back on the drawing board, thanks to some unlikely designers, and the disabled have a serious advantage in this conversation. They’ve been using technology in collaborative, intimate ways for years - to move, to communicate, to interact with the world.

Note that this is an argument about what we’d now call neuroplasticity that never once mentions the term.

Wired 9.08: The Next Brainiacs