Rebuilt: How Becoming Part Computer Made Me More Human

#429
Title: Rebuilt: How Becoming Part Computer Made Me More Human
Author: Michael Chorost
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Year: 2005
238 pages

Michael Chorost, already partially deaf, suddenly went completely deaf. More than just a memoir of this experience of deafness and acquiring a cochlear implant, Rebuilt's narrative is intertwined with Chorost's thoughts and speculations about becoming a cyborg (that is, a human with "software that makes if-then-else decisions and acts on the body to carry them out" (p. 40). This is a good book to read with Donna Haraway's "A Cyborg Manifesto," which Chorost references extensively, and Myron Uhlberg's Hands of My Father: A Hearing Boy, His Deaf Parents, and the Language of Love.

Chorost's musings can sometimes be tiring. Put the book down and return to it later--it's worth following him through the whole thought, but sometimes his style can be wearing as he delves into semiotics and representation.

Note to Houghton Mifflin: What's wrong with this statement? "...I would find an oak seed in the yard, break its green whirlybird wings in half, and paste the sap-sticky center on my nose...." (p. 32). Clearly, copy editing is a lost art.