This groundbreaking study examines the social construction of cochlear implants, exploring how debates around this technology reflect deeper societal attitudes towards deafness, disability and the nature of human identity. Drawing on a wealth of interdisciplinary research, the authors shed new light on the complex relationship between technology and culture.
"The Minnesota Innovation Research Program, on which this book is based, involved over 30 researchers who undertook longitudinal studies that tracked the development of 14 diverse innovations in real time and in their natural field settings. Studying its results, the authors find that the innovation journey is neither sequential and orderly, nor is it a matter of random trial and error; rather it is best characterized as a nonlinear dynamic system."--BOOK JACKET.