It’s good to hear from you.

With reference to my mention about cochlear implants:

The age of neural implants is also well under way. We have brain implants based on “neuromorphic” modeling (i.e., reverse-engineering of the human brain and nervous system) for a rapidly growing list of brain regions. A friend of mine who became deaf while an adult can now engage in telephone conversations again because of his cochlear implant, a device that interfaces directly with the auditory nervous system. He plans to replace it with a new model with a thousand levels of frequency discrimination, which will enable him to hear music once again. He laments that he has had the same melodies playing in his head for the past 15 years and is looking forward to hearing some new tunes. A future generation of cochlear implants now on the drawing board will provide levels of frequency discrimination that go significantly beyond that of “normal” hearing…

This paragraph was part of a section I quoted from Ray Kurzweil’s essay, so the friend mentioned was a friend of Ray Kurzweil’s – not someone I know personally.

I’m far from being an expert in cochlear implants, though I’m keen to learn more!

// dw2

I’m an CI-user myself, and caught interest in your comments about your friend in this post. Do you have any sources to the information about the future generations of CI?

I watched a documentary tonight, that touched on the Transhumanists. I remembered our discussion at SEE09, and wrote a short blog entry about it http://blog.petras.mobi/2009/11/28/transhumans-h.aspx

One of the proferssors interviewed said that in science, we are increasingly starting to look inwards into our bodies, rather than outwards into the exterior. I need to comment that this may not be an entirely good thing.

You’ll see that in my opinion, we only have limited scientific resources, and they should be directed to where they do most good. Matching the number of people (and domestic animals) on the planet to the limited natural resources is taks #1. Prolonging the life of those already living here would be a task #2 or even #3.

This is not to say that I don’t see value in the transhumanistic way of thinking. If we could slow down the overpopulation by results of bio- or nanotech, that would be a good thing.

I will follow the discussions at UKH+ and see if it will change my thinking.