Wir sind die Roboter

Germans are famous for technology, and with good reason. My flatmate's cousins were here at the weekend, and one of the two guys had cochlear implants. That means, bionic ears. I was completely blown away. The dude was born stone deaf, and his parents later realized that he was perhaps deaf, but nevertheless a smart kid - he had learned to lip read before he had learned to hear. Crazy.

But anyway, now the guy can hear really well. You don't even notice that he is in any way hearing impaired, but he does say that if there's too much going on in the room, then he has troubles. So there are a few obstacles, but really not many. He makes jokes about the benefits about being officially handicapped, because really on a practical level, he's not handicapped at all. So he's quite happy getting all the discounts for handicapped people, and all the exemptions that come with that. We were also joking that he'll have the advantage in the future, in the event a girlfriend starts chewing him out for something, he can just take off the external aids off his ears, which look alot like a hearing aid for old folks. In the past, people with these implants actually had an "interface port" of sorts coming out of their head basically, but now there is no external connection on his head, this connection is made in a short-range wireless sense, and the connectors basically magnetically stick to a point behind his ears. he could remove the aids in a split second. I was completely impressed.

Ears 2.0. Germans lead this field of research, and is now a well proven technology. He admits he was one of the lucky kids, where the technique was more successful on him than most other patients. other people generally seem more "handicapped", but basically the only job he can't do is to be a sound technician or a swimming coach. that's about it.