My new officemate is a cyborg!

Last night at an open house for the Sanchez Grotto Annex, where I have a writing office, I noticed a man with something electronic literally stuck to the side of his head quietly poking around one of the offices. Bumping into me later, he revealed that his first book had just been released. "What's it about?" I wanted to know. He explained it was a about how he'd suddenly gone completely deaf after years of relying on hearing aids. Rather than face a world without sound, he decided to have a cochlear implant installed, making him in effect a cyborg--and a reluctant one at that.

The first chapter of Michael Chorost's book "Rebuilt: How Becoming a Part Computer Made Me More Human," which is downloadable for free via his Web site, documents in rich, evocative language the initial sensations and heartbreak of going deaf and the difficult choice to have the implant installed, essentially turning over one of his five senses to the hands of software programmers and electronic engineers.

He writes:
If deafness is a kind of death, hearing again is a kind of rebirth. But I would be reborn into a different body. Becky carefully explains to me that the implant can't restore the living organ in all its subtlety and complexity. The world mediated by the computer in my skull would sound synthetic, the product of approximations, interpolations, and compromises. My body would have bewildering new properties and new rules, and it would take me weeks, months, even years, to understand them fully.

I love books (fiction and nonfiction) that transport me inside a world or experience that I would never otherwise have access to. I'm really looking forward to learning about Michael's unique perspectives both through is book and by having him as my new officemate.