New
York: Houghton Mifflin; ISBN 0-618-37829-4. 232 pages. |
REBUILT:
How Becoming Part
Computer Made Me More Human
|
to
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By
Michael Chorost
Reviewed
by Paul Bernstein, MD, FACS
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Suddenly,
instead of cars making their usual "vrump," they sound like
crumpling paper; words turn into mumbled "mmmm mmbm bbmm verumf,"
and then nothing. After a battery of MRIs and hearing tests, you find
you have irreversible hearing loss. You're deaf. You've heard about
cochlear implants, was it that old TV show, The Six Million Dollar
Man? Wasn't that what Rush Limbaugh had done? Your hopes soar as
you think of a bionic ear that will restore your hearing and bring you
back into the "normal" world.
Rebuilt,
a memoir by Michael Chorost, takes us into his world of no sound. If
"Going deaf is a kind of death ..."1p187 Mr Chorost
takes us through his stages of rebirth. From the two-hour outpatient
procedure to the programming of the implant, the reader is taken on
a fascinating journey. In the author's words, he becomes a cyborg. He
is careful to point out the difference between an android like the Terminator
(a robot that looks like a human being) and a cyborg, a human with a
bionic part. But unlike an artificial limb, a cochlear implant alters
his perception of the world. The simple sounds of a bird, a car, or
a horn are now different. Autumn leaves tinkle rather than crunch. Leaf
blowers and toilets sound like artillery fire. Sounds are so altered,
he needs to relearn the sound and cadence of the world around him.
How does
this new computer stimulation trigger his eighth cranial nerve? He describes
it like a rock skipping over the surface of water. The 140,000 transistors
of his implant cannot completely replicate the 12,500 outer hairs cells
and 3500 inner hairs cells of his cochlea. The sixteen electrodes implanted
through his round window into his cochlea send a digital series of ones
and zeroes that Chorost's brain learns to interpret.
The metal
disc attached magnetically behind his ear to his implant is liberating
for him, because people don't know "... what the heck it
is ..."1p189 Unlike a hearing aid, people don't assume
the wearer is "... slow ... [has] to be shouted at ... old."1p189
Imagine. The implant not only gives him the ability to understand
the sounds around him, it gives him the freedom to shape how people
perceive him.
In this
moving account, the reader experiences what it's like to live in the
author's world, from the first cell phone he's able to plug into his
implant to the first time he fumbles to remove the wires in the throes
of passion. "[T]here's nothing more isolating than deafness,"
1p188 Mr Chorost states, and his cochlear implant--his built-in
computer chip--makes him feel more connected to the world than before.
With his internal "World Wide Web" he learns to construct
the environment around him and create a fulfilling new reality.
As we enter
a new age of bionics and cyborgs, Rebuilt teaches us that although
we can now make the deaf hear, in the author's words, "they cannot
make me listen."1p183 To paraphrase Mr Chorost,
it's only when we listen that we become better human beings.
Reference
1.
Chorost M. Rebuilt: How becoming part computer made me more human. New
York: Houghton Mifflin; 2005.
Paul Bernstein, MD, FACS, is the Regional
Chief of Head and Neck Surgery for SCPMG. He is the Medical Director of
Quality Assurance for HEARx West, and Chair of the Head and Neck Division
of the American Cancer Society. He was also the 2005 San Diego Area Partner
of the Year. E-mail: paul.e.bernstein@kp.org
