[extropy-chat] Transhuman hearing aids

[J. Andrew Rogers]

On Jul 10, 2006, at 10:50 AM, Damien Sullivan wrote:
> I'm reading George Williams, _Plan and Purpose in Nature_.  He laments
> our having only two ears, and points out we could fake the benefits  
> with
> programmable hearing aids.  Have the aids also connected to two more
> microphones on the body, and a wearable computer; the computer  
> would be
> able to have full range and direction information, and you could  
> tell it
> to filter out all sounds except from a desired area.


The hacking of cochlear implants to rewire inputs is purportedly not  
unknown, though obviously rare.  These have the benefit of having a  
communication protocol/channel between the sensor and the implant,  
allowing some hacking on that abstraction layer.  The neat part is  
that it does not have to be conventionally encoded audio that is  
communicated over the channel -- think intentionally induced  
synaesthesia.

J. Andrew Rogers