Book recommendation - Rebuilt
I'm in the middle of a fascinating book that I found in the library: Rebuilt: How Becoming Part Computer Made Me More Human by Michael Chorost. woofiegrrl, eyes_of_cyrene, and anyone else who is interested in deafness, I think you'll want to read it.
Chorost's mother had rubella while she was pregnant, so he was born severely hearing-impaired. With two powerful hearing-aids he was doing fine until one day, when he was 35, his remaining hearing inexplicably vanished within hours. He got a cochlear implant, but had to endure a period of complete deafness for a period of time before it could be implanted and activated. In the book he describes his experiences and explores his feelings about his lack of hearing, about abruptly going from hard of hearing to completely deaf, and about the implant.
The book includes extensive factual information about cochlear implants -- how they work (including verbal explanations, diagrams, and even photographs of the inner ear), their history, and even the implant surgery. Chorost also describes in great detail what it's like to hear with an implant -- with the two different software programs he was given, before and after an upgrade to the software, and as he gets used to using it.
He also explores his feelings through the whole experience -- a little overdramatically for my taste, as he considers himself a cyborg and compares himself frequently to Steve Austin, the protagonist of Martin Caidin's book Cyborg. (Steve Austin was also The $6 Million Man, but Chorost feels more in common with the character portrayed in the original book than in the TV show.) Although he doesn't -- at least in the part I've read so far -- say so, it's obvious that the book was undertaken at least as much to help him work through his feelings as to educate the public. Still, if that's how he sees himself then it's valid to include it, and he doesn't pull any punches about any of his feelings, including what it's like for a man with an implant to have sex (where do you put the belt-mounted processor unit when you're naked?).
All in all it's a fascinating book with a pretty good balance of factual information about hearing and cochlear implants; subjective information about what he hears with and without an implant; and descriptions of feelings about the impact of deafness and the implant on his life.
ADDED: As I read further, I was pleased to see that Chorost is very positive about signing, and regretful that he didn't learn ASL himself as a child. He devotes an entire chapter to the conflict between the Deaf community and the oralist movement, including a nonjudgmental treatment of the views of some Deaf people who want their children to be Deaf, and discusses the future of ASL as technology improves and more and more deaf people get cochlear implants at younger and younger ages.
Chorost's mother had rubella while she was pregnant, so he was born severely hearing-impaired. With two powerful hearing-aids he was doing fine until one day, when he was 35, his remaining hearing inexplicably vanished within hours. He got a cochlear implant, but had to endure a period of complete deafness for a period of time before it could be implanted and activated. In the book he describes his experiences and explores his feelings about his lack of hearing, about abruptly going from hard of hearing to completely deaf, and about the implant.
The book includes extensive factual information about cochlear implants -- how they work (including verbal explanations, diagrams, and even photographs of the inner ear), their history, and even the implant surgery. Chorost also describes in great detail what it's like to hear with an implant -- with the two different software programs he was given, before and after an upgrade to the software, and as he gets used to using it.
He also explores his feelings through the whole experience -- a little overdramatically for my taste, as he considers himself a cyborg and compares himself frequently to Steve Austin, the protagonist of Martin Caidin's book Cyborg. (Steve Austin was also The $6 Million Man, but Chorost feels more in common with the character portrayed in the original book than in the TV show.) Although he doesn't -- at least in the part I've read so far -- say so, it's obvious that the book was undertaken at least as much to help him work through his feelings as to educate the public. Still, if that's how he sees himself then it's valid to include it, and he doesn't pull any punches about any of his feelings, including what it's like for a man with an implant to have sex (where do you put the belt-mounted processor unit when you're naked?).
All in all it's a fascinating book with a pretty good balance of factual information about hearing and cochlear implants; subjective information about what he hears with and without an implant; and descriptions of feelings about the impact of deafness and the implant on his life.
ADDED: As I read further, I was pleased to see that Chorost is very positive about signing, and regretful that he didn't learn ASL himself as a child. He devotes an entire chapter to the conflict between the Deaf community and the oralist movement, including a nonjudgmental treatment of the views of some Deaf people who want their children to be Deaf, and discusses the future of ASL as technology improves and more and more deaf people get cochlear implants at younger and younger ages.