"Cory Doctorow: A deaf hacker diligently tinkered with the firmware on his cochlear implant, trying to get it to faithfully render out Ravel's symphony, Boléro, eventually meeting with success. Michael Chorost was born with partial hearing, and at 15, he discovered that Boléro was audible to him, and it became a touchstone for him, a piece of music that he developed a deep emotional attachment to. In 2001, Chorost experienced the sudden, total loss of the remains of his hearing, and Boléro was lost to him, seemingly forever.
In this Wired feature, Chorost chronicles the amazing journey he embarked upon, learning the science of acoustics, of music, and of signal processing, reprogramming the firmware in his implanted prosthetic with the help of experts around the world with various theories about the psychoacoustic basis for music.
The story is gripping, fascinating and informative -- a template for a tale that I believe will become more and more prevalent in times to come: a person who relies on computerized prosthetics not being satisfied with the features that were included with it out of the box, taking it upon herself to improve it, to extend it, using her own body and perceptions as a labratory for experiments on human perception and performance. [lin k]:
No comments:
Post a Comment