Imagine a future, where you could simply switch your hearing ability on and off.
When I first thought about this, I got so excited, that I started writing a science fiction story around the implications. Unfortunately, I'm a horrible writer.
I am not talking about noise canceling headphones or ear plugs but something like a neurological switch. I assume the "easiest" way to do this, would be a surgery in which one cuts the nerves between the ears and the brain and installs an electronic switch. But I know nothing about this stuff.
I've actually envied people with cochlear implants for having this ability. The idea of being able to turn on and off senses at will is kind of an amazing thought. I personally have a hypersensitive sense of touch, and it is an almost constant distraction. I can't count the number of times I've wished I could toggle or perhaps just filter my senses.
It's still undoubtedly far off in the wings. I'm not sure if anything has been done on the purely organic side, but I know that at least on the ECE side of things our ability to effectively interact with organic systems is still quite ineffective and brutish. The professor I had for digital signal processing last year does some work with cochlear implants. He spent a lecture talking about the current technologies, and the implantation and interfacing he described was very destructive. There would undoubtedly be severe ability loss if they were used on an otherwise capable person to try to enable this ability. It would be nice if we evolutionary developed some high-pass preprocessing. Unfortunately, I have a feeling that will take a good bit longer to develop than man-made alternatives.
I'd be interested to read what you've written if you'd like another set of eyes on it.
When I first thought about this, I got so excited, that I started writing a science fiction story around the implications. Unfortunately, I'm a horrible writer.
I am not talking about noise canceling headphones or ear plugs but something like a neurological switch. I assume the "easiest" way to do this, would be a surgery in which one cuts the nerves between the ears and the brain and installs an electronic switch. But I know nothing about this stuff.