Half Human or Half Cyborg?

Reading about Chorost's life of a cyborg intrigued me so much i had to do further research on Cochlear implants and other bionic advancements. I remember along time ago implants were becoming available for the blind to see in grainy black and white images by implanting devices in their heads hooks up to a chip. This was similar to Chorost's auditory replacement. Stevie Wonder was considering getting this surgery done however backed out last second after he thought about how having vision would dramatically alter his life maybe even negatively. There is actually a large debate among the deaf community about weather this technology should be available because of the unique gifts that the deaf posses will be lost as they progress into becoming more “normal”. This was one of the reasons Stevie did not go through with the procedure.

What I was impressed by the most in Chorost’s story was his ability to plug in devices to his processor and listen to audio files and other audio streams. Sound is sensed by our own ears as just fluctuations of waves in frequencies we can pick up. The cochlear implant works in the same way by picking up these distinct waves and sending them to the brain to translate. The significance of how we are embedding technology in our selves is to show the progression of how we are turning complex human processing into digital form. Eventually someday it would be interesting to see processors capable of competing with the human brain in developing adapting patterns to emotions and behaviors.