What Bishkek's Disabled Citizens Refuse to Let a City Forget

Deskilling the Mind: Tech, Disability, and the New Pathways of Human AdaptationI no longer know anyone's phone number by heart, apart from my own and one from childhood that belongs to a house I haven't entered in decades. This is a small loss, and I notice it only when my phone is dead and I stand in a station trying to reach someone. The knowledge did not vanish through neglect. I handed it to a device, and the device kept it faithfully, and I forgot I had ever held it.Researchers have a word for this, and it is less poetic than the experience itself: deskilling. It tends to arrive dressed as convenience, and you notice the exchange only once the convenience is unavailable.Here is my argument. Deskilling follows from how we build our tools, and we can build them differently. The people best placed to show us how are those who have always had to adapt to a world not built for them. In Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, disabled citizens are using the same digital memory that lets me forget a phone…

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