LISTEN

This is what is right about the world 

At $40K+, it's worth every penny - IMHO. 

hah, awesome 

Beautiful. 

HUMANITY:

hope +1 

That's cool and all, but I expected something greater, not sure what, but still pretty awesome. 

A little boy is hearing his mother speak for the first time in his life. What more do you want, butthole? 

Come on dude, even trolls have limits. 

Btw, I think this is awesome.
This and airport reunions. 

What a a way to start the day. Big smile! 

^True. No more internets for today. Start and end on a good note. 

Someone posted this to my gf's facebook wall, but the video was on another site... and it had a "next video" in the lineup, which was this one - an 11 year old plays contra for the first time.

i thot it was a lot more interesting :) 

Sweet. 

JDH annan said:

Someone posted this to my gf's facebook wall, but the video was on another site... and it had a "next video" in the lineup, which was this one - an 11 year old plays contra for the first time.

i thot it was a lot more interesting :)

HUMANITY:

hope -1 

babies and cock implants, this is disgusting... 

butthole said:

That's cool and all, but I expected something greater, not sure what, but still pretty awesome.

Baby NewEars said:

....whaaaaaat theeeee FUCK is this?!

But really I find this stuff fascinating. I've only encountered it superficially in my coursework but it has seriously piqued my interest. One of the things I find most intriguing is what different people are actually perceiving. Just grabbed this quick:

Wikipedia said:

British Member of Parliament Jack Ashley received a cochlear implant in 1994 at age 70 after 25 years of deafness, and reported that he has no trouble speaking to people he knows; whether one on one or even on the telephone, although he might have difficulty with a new voice or with a busy conversation, and still had to rely to some extent on lipreading. He described the robotic sound of human voices perceived through the cochlear implant as "a croaking dalek with laryngitis". Another recipient described the initial sounds as similar to radio static and voices as being cartoonish, though after a year with the implant she said everything sounded right.[26] Even modern cochlear implants have at most 24 electrodes to replace the 16,000 delicate hair cells that are used for normal hearing. However, the sound quality delivered by a cochlear implant is often good enough that many users do not have to rely on lipreading.

But for users that don't know what voices should sound like, as with babies, what are they hearing? Someone could spend their whole life perceiving the world in a completely different way than you. I suppose it's a pretty elementary concept, but I get super-dork-excited about stuff like that.

Also, (I skipped the intro 'cause if I recall I was annoyed by Dean Kamen's delivery) this direction in prosthetic limbs is pretty awesome.

Every time I hear about the plasticity of the brain I think "FUCK YES HUMAN BODY!". Created, evolved, whatever maaan, we're pretty wonderful either way. 

pongobongo said:

Someone could spend their whole life perceiving the world in a completely different way than you.

http://www.ryanruff.com/345/images/can%27t%20see%20shit.jpg

Also, (I skipped the intro 'cause if I recall I was annoyed by Dean Kamen's delivery) this direction in prosthetic limbs is pretty awesome.

Every time I hear about the plasticity of the brain I think "FUCK YES HUMAN BODY!". Created, evolved, whatever maaan, we're pretty wonderful either way.

Jesus Henry Christ, that was awesome, especially with the new multi-input control system. The last lady in the video at the end of the second link was moving the rest of her body like a robot, too, though... 

pongobongo said:

l I was annoyed by Dean Kamen's delivery

There's something about this field (brain-machine-interface) that makes people give horrible talks. A shame because it's pretty much the most interesting thing in the world right now. 

This is the best thing that I have ever seen. 

Am I the only one who wanted to reach through the screen and slap that mom for just repeating "HI!" over and over? The kid finally gets to hear and that's all you've got for him? 

DREW ALMIGHTY said:

Am I the only one who wanted to reach through the screen and slap that mom for just repeating "HI!" over and over? The kid finally gets to hear and that's all you've got for him?

Hopefully, yes.

It's an 8 month old baby! It doesn't hear words, it hears sounds coming from people's mouths. To him, who is speaking is more important than what is said. 

DREW ALMIGHTY said:

Am I the only one who wanted to reach through the screen and slap that mom for just repeating "HI!" over and over? The kid finally gets to hear and that's all you've got for him?

a) I cannot even begin to imagine what is going thru mom's head at that moment, so I actually give her credit for keeping together and managing to say "hi"

b) As somebody said before, it's an 8 MONTH OLD BABY. What the hell you wanted mom to tell him? The theory of relativity? Dante's Divine Comedy? Or maybe Beethoven's fifth?

Instead of being a douche and think about slapping the mom, think about how amazingly lucky this kid is to live in such an awesome age (*), where he will be able to hear his Mom say "hi!" to him over and over and over...

(*): Granted, we have our more than fair share of crappy moments, but still... 

bFTE said:

This is the best thing that I have ever seen heard.

More apropos. 

I don't want to slap her but I see his point.

If the first words the baby heard were "I love you" think of how many more "D'awwwwws" you'd be feeling right now! 

Aw jeez, I've got something in my eye.... 

I'm not sure there's any redeeming some of you. 

Totally Freaking Awesome.

I love the little baby "Jaw Drop" Moment he had.

"What the hell is THAT??" 

it's a shame, from what i understand a large part of the bond between parents and the child, and certainly between mom and child, comes from what the kid hears in the womb every day. lots of learning can start there too

i guess what i'm trying to say is this kid is going to be irrevocably retarded and will hate his parents 

b stabby said:

i guess what i'm trying to say is this kid is going to be irrevocably retarded and will hate his parents

spoken like a true parent to his/her own kids! 

b stabby said:

it's a shame, from what i understand a large part of the bond between parents and the child, and certainly between mom and child, comes from what the kid hears in the womb every day. lots of learning can start there too

i guess what i'm trying to say is this kid is going to be irrevocably retarded and will hate his parents

yeah, i loved the video, too 

nah, people can learn language development just fine as long as they do it before puberty. This kid may be behind for a bit, but language learning really takes off exponentially so he should catch up really fast. 

People don't remember anything from that young of an age anyway. 

Not consciously, no,
but it can still impact them
and affect their development
for better or worse. 

Brilliant vid. Had to mask my unmanly sniffles with a big "harrrumphh!" and blow my nose. 

totally cried after watching it three times 

am I the only one that didn't get that much out of it?

I was really looking for something more than just a head turn.

who knows what he "heard"

he might have heard the "stop sucking" thing, but that seems about it. 

He heard something when he hadn't until that point. 

am I the only one that didn't get that much out of it?

Start the sucking. 

I was expecting surprise kitty 

this is what the cochlear implant sounds like:

This demonstration simulates what speech and music would sound like through a cochlear implant. These simulations were generated using the noise-band vocoder first described in Shannon et al. (Science, 1995, 270: 303-304). While the quality of the sound is not necessarily the same as what a person hears with a cochlear implant, laboratory tests have demonstrated that the intelligibility of speech with this simulation is very similar to that of a cochlear implant.
http://www.hei.org/research/aip/decrease_channels.mp3

more demos here. 

um..."a boy fell from the window"??
jesus christ...whatever happened to "the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog"?? 

His head really jerked when they turned it on.

I wonder if it goes *POP!* when turned on like a poorly setup assault stereo. It would hurt. 

SpinDrift said:

this is what the cochlear implant sounds like:

more demos here.

That's pretty amazing that it does speech so well, but thank raptor jesus i can hear. I'd miss music far too much. I wonder how well techno translates... 

I wonder how well techno translates...

a boy fell
woot woot
a boy fell from
woot woot
a boy fell
woot woot
a boy fell from the window

oonst oonst oonst.... 

those demos are terrifying. 

So basically with one of these implants it sounds like Satan himself is speaking to you through everyone around you? I'd fall from the window too. 

airdrummer said:

a boy fell
woot woot
a boy fell from
woot woot
a boy fell
woot woot
a boy fell from the window

oonst oonst oonst....

Reminds me of Ambassador 21...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSu_Z2W19oM 

Heh - nice link, CS. Did you realize Converter is our very own haze? 

Sooo... his head turns automatically when you hear the click come of the doctor turning it on...it's almost as if it was like some kind of nerve tweaked when it happens. He turns his head before she says anything...the motor movements of his head just seem odd to me 

"stop the sucking" was odd to me. he just spit it out like he understood.