Michael Chorost (pronounced like “chorus” with a T at the end) is a technology theorist with an unusual perspective: his body is the future. In 2001 he went completely deaf and had a computer implanted in his head to let him hear again. This transformative experience inspired his first book, Rebuilt: How Becoming Part Computer Made Me More Human. He wrote about how mastering his new ear, a cochlear implant, enabled him to enhance his creative potential as a human being. The critics agreed; in 2006 Rebuilt won the PEN/USA Book Award for Creative Nonfiction. Shortly afterward it was reprinted in paperback under the new title Rebuilt: My Journey Back to the Hearing World.
Dr. Chorost earned his B.A. at Brown University and studied computer programming, Renaissance drama, and cultural theory on the way to his Ph.D. at UT-Austin. He doesn’t draw sharp lines between programming, science, writing, and art; to him, these are all profoundly creative human endeavors. This freewheeling approach infuses his second book, World Wide Mind: The Coming Integration of Humanity, Machines, and the Internet. In this book he ups the ante, proposing that humanity can incorporate the computer into its collective soul in a way that enhances communities and creative work instead of diminishing them.
After graduate school he worked briefly for Scient, a dot-com in San Francisco, and then spent 4 1/2 years doing research in education at SRI International in Menlo Park, California.
As a freelance science writer he has written for Wired, The Washington Post, Technology Review, and The Scientist, among others. He wrote the screenplay for a TV special on brain implants titled The 22nd Century, which aired on PBS in January 2007. He sits on external advisory boards for neuroscience research at Northwestern and Brown. He has given over 110 talks at institutions such as Google, MIT, Stanford, Brown, the Brookings Institute, and the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco.
Dr. Chorost was born in New Jersey and has lived in North Carolina, Texas, and California. In 2008 he moved to Washington D.C., where he now lives with his wife and their three cats Harper, Posy, and Elvis.
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Video clips of some of my talks/interviews
A lecture I gave at the International Neuroethics Society, Washington, D.C., November 12, 2011.
A book reading I gave for Rebuilt, July 11, 2005, University Book Store, Seattle, Washington.
A talk I gave at Authors@Google, June 30, 2008, Mountain View, California.
My author video for WORLD WIDE MIND, made by Simon & Schuster, Feb. 2, 2011, New York City.
An interview with me on a PBS Newshour story on prosthetic devices, June 28, 2011.
An interview with me on TV RAIN, a Russian Internet TV channel, July 15, 2011, Moscow. I'm told the interpreter didn't do such a great job, but at least I'm talking in English.
Articles in which I’m quoted
PBS Newshour, Will 'Bionic Bodies' Offer High-Tech Hope to the Disabled?, June 28, 2011. I'm on from minute 7:40 to 8:30.
San Francisco Chronicle, Humans hope high tech can improve their bodies, January 1, 2009.
The Economist, Sounds like a good idea, March 2008.
New York Times, Robo-Legs, June 20, 2005.
Articles in which I’m profiled
IT Business Edge, Integrating Humans and Computers – Is There a Spiritual Dimension?, Feb. 20, 2011.
More Digital, Endless possibilities: the Michael Chorost interview, Feb. 28, 2011.
Silicon.com, Cyborg brains: The next evolutionary step, Feb. 28, 2011.
U.S. News & World Report, Learning to Love Being Part Computer, July 13, 2005.