Jamais Cascio on his new hearing aids

My Institute for the Future colleague Jamais Cascio just got hearing aids. He's written an interesting essay on his experience so far, and also riffs on technology for human augmentation and enhancement. It's titled "The Accidental Cyborg." From the essay:

 Images Out-Of-Ear
These aren't just dumb amplifiers; they're little digital signal processors, small enough to fit into the ear canal, and smart enough to know when to boost the input and when to leave it alone. They're programmable, too (sadly, not by the end-user — programming requires an acoustic enclosure, not just a computer connection). And here's where therapeutic augmentation starts to fuzz into enhancement: one of the program modes I'm considering would give me far better than normal hearing, allowing me to pick up distant conversations like I was standing right there…

I expect that, over the next decade, hearing aid technologies will have improved enough that most of the drawbacks will have been rectified, and I'll have access to hearing capabilities better than ever before; over that same time, we may see biomedical advances that can fix deficient hearing, restoring perfectly functional natural hearing. Augmentation for therapy slides inexorably into augmentation for enhancement. Should I give up my better-than-human hearing to go back to a "natural" state?

Link

Previously on BB:
• Simians, Cyborgs, and Gareth Brawnyn Link
• Musician requests truly badass bone conduction hearing aid Link
• Hearing aid museum Link
• Deaf hacker rewrites implant-firmware Link