Rebuilt
My Journey Back to the Hearing World
Buy the Book: Amazon, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, BookshopPublished by: Mariner Books; Reprint edition
Release Date: May 19, 2006
Pages: 240
ISBN13: 978-0618717606
Overview
Michael Chorost became a cyborg on October 1, 2001, the day his new ear was booted up. Born hard of hearing in 1964, he went completely deaf in his thirties. Rather than live in silence, he chose to have a computer surgically embedded in his skull to artificially restore his hearing.
This début book is the story of Chorost’s journey – from deafness to hearing, from human to cyborg –and how it transformed him. The melding of silicon and flesh has long been the stuff of science fiction. But as Chorost reveals in this witty, poignant, and illuminating memoir, fantasy is now giving way to reality.
Chorost found his new body mystifyingly mechanical: Kitchen magnets stuck to his head. He could plug himself directly into a CD player. His hearing was routinely upgraded with new software.
All of which forced him to confront complex questions about humans in the machine age: When the senses become programmable, can we trust what they tell us about the world? Will cochlear implants destroy the signing deaf community? And above all, are cyborgs still human?
A brilliant dispatch from the technological frontier, Rebuilt is also an ode to sound. Whether Chorost is adjusting his software in a desperate attempt to make the world sound “right” again, exploring the neurobiology of the ear, or reflecting on the simple pleasure of his mother’s voice, he invites us to think about what we hear — and how we experience the world — in an altogether new way.
Brimming with insight and written with dry, self-deprecating humor, this quirky coming-of-age story unveils – in a way no other book has – the magnificent possibilities of a new technological era.
Praise
“Funny and thoughtful, the book is an extended meditation on the nature of perception, the human brain and the relationship between technology and humanity…Rebuilt may be the first of a new genre: the cyborg memoir.”
—LA Times
“By far the most original, honest, and authoritative book I’ve read on human-machine interfaces.”
—Chronicle for Higher Education
“Readers will find much food for thought on the implications of medical technology and what constitutes our humanity in this beautifully written debut.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Chorost’s graceful, poetic turns of phrase and dry, self-deprecating humor take what could have been a dry technological story and breathe life into it, explaining the technological component with precision while taking the reader on a real roller-coaster ride of emotion through the process.”
—Library Journal
“Chorost takes us on an amazing intellectual journey as he moves from deafness to computer-assisted hearing. He asks big questions about the nature of reality, the meaning of being human, and how much we can bear to be ‘improved.’ Chorost has a fine ear for language, and writes with intelligence, wit, and not a little bit of what he calls ‘rueful irony.’ A lovely book.”
—Robin Marantz Henig, author of Pandora’s Baby and The Monk in the Garden
Excerpt
I'm impatient. It hasn’t been a good morning. I’m on a business trip and have just arrived in Reno, where I’m supposed to interview people at Tahoe for a study. But the car rental at the airport won’t take my debit card. I spend half an hour canvassing the other outlets, no luck. Finally a man at one counter kindly names a competitor and points me to a courtesy phone.
“Dial 133. They usually have cars and their rates are okay.”
I pick up the phone. I can hear it fine with my hearing aids, even amid the ruckus of the baggage claim. Yes, they have cars available. The voice directs me to the shuttle bus outside the airport.
It’s the last telephone call I will ever make with my natural ears.
Paperwork signed, I wait for my car. I fidget. I might as well have driven here instead of flying. And then —
That’s odd. The traffic sounds fuzzy all of a sudden. Instead of their usual decisive vrump, the cars have started making a whispery sound as they go by, as if plowing through shredded paper. And they sound a hundred yards away, even though I’m right by the road.