Mission Philosophy	PHILOSOPHY Control Bionics is committed to developing the best technology to help people enhance their abilities, their independence, and their dignity. The Control Bionics philosophy is based on more than twenty years of experience working with people with profound disabilities, designing software and hardware to enable them to communicate and to control electronic and robotic devices. Philosophy and technology are wary partners, but to serve humans fully and well, technology requires a guiding human ideal.  Mathematician and philosopher Jacob Bronowski said "science compels the practitioner to form a fundamental set of human values".  As a product of science, Control Bionics technology is evolving within a philosophy of essential human values. We believe dignity is a fundamental human right, at the foundation of our identity, self-esteem, sense of freedom, of how we each imprint ourselves on the world.  We each want our lives to have meaning, worth and dignity.  We each want to be able to say when we review our lives, "I was here, and it mattered." We understand how too often people overcoming trauma or neuromuscular debility feel they have given up far more than the freedom to move or speak easily. We understand how requirements of daily care too often leave people feeling as if they are losing their most basic freedoms and dignity.  We have seen how they are too often treated as though they do not have a mind, a spirit, a personality: how too often they feel ignored, invisible, mute. Gary Wynn Kelly, a pioneer in the field of Assistive Technology (AT), and the founding chief of the Rehabilitative Research and Development Laboratory at the VA Medical Center in Atlanta in 1981 defines the fundamental focus of AT: "Persons with disabilities need to be able to behave according to their own values." One of the most valuable pieces of guidance Gary gave to those of us developing AT systems back then was, "For every hardware problem, there is a software solution".  It has been a great catalyst for innovation. As the technology becomes more powerful, comprehensive and exciting, that philosophy continues to inform the way AT evolves: make the software more versatile, but always user-friendly, to enable people with disabilities to break through or bypass all obstacles, to enhance ability and dignity - to enable each person to say, "I am here, and I matter."