[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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