[Cyborg] "I hear colors"
Tomm
tomm.fire at gmail.com
Thu Sep 20 09:00:07 UTC 2012
A cyborg I hadn't heard of before, Neil Harbisson, is completely
colorblind (achromatopsia), and in 2004 started wearing "an electronic
eye: a color sensor between my eyes connected to a chip installed at the
back of my head that transforms color frequencies into sound frequencies
that I hear through my bone.".
http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/09/opinion/harbisson-hear-colors/?iref=obnetwork
He talks a lot about brain plasticity and dreaming in color/sound, and
finishes with what I'd call a cyborg manifesto:
"By becoming cyborgs we have the chance to extend our perception to the
level of other animal species. We focus so much on extending our
knowledge and focus so little on extending our senses. No matter how
much I knew about color, as long as I couldn't sense color, color made
no sense to me. Knowledge comes from our senses: if we extend our
senses, we extend our knowledge. We are the first generation that
doesn't need to wait for natural evolution to evolve; we can evolve
during our lifetime."
Cool stuff!
Tom
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