BOOK REVIEWS
Print/online reviews: 26 (25 positive, 1 mixed)
Amazon reviews: 32 (average rating: 5 stars)
as of September 10, 2007 

Along the way toward achieving the mechanical and human goals Chorost establishes for himself, he introduces us to many people, often with great humor. We meet his surgeon and audiologist, who tirelessly answer his long list of questions. We are introduced to individuals from the cochlear implant’s manufacturer, who discuss their view of the future, and to his coworkers at the research firm he is working with at the time, who provide patience and support
through the adjustment process. He relays discussions with members of the deaf community about cochlear implant policy and viewpoints. And we meet a number of the women he dated; it is especially amusing to read about his first ‘‘tryst’’ after receiving his implant—what to do with the processor at a time when one has no pockets or belt, what if the earpiece falls off . . . (well, you have to read the book).
-Stephen Chaikind, Sign Language Studies, volume 7, number 3, Spring 2007.

Here, although the book’s structure and overt theme are conventional enough, it is far more than the standard tale of uplifting triumph over physical catastrophe. For one thing, Chorost is an endearingly genuine techie: he got his PhD for writing an award-winning program, and he once had what he describes as an “elegant, productive addiction” to computers. He is therefore ideally placed to observe, and to explain as best he can, his growing awareness of his bilateral kinship with the digital as well as organic modes of being.
-Jackie Leach Scully, Metapsychology Online, volume 10, number 48, Nov 28th, 2006 (full review)

Even as they become increasingly indispensable, computers still arouse fears that they will distort our essential humanity.

Could super-intelligent robots ultimately enslave us? Will cyborgs — part-human, part-implanted electronic circuitry — acquire powers that we can only dream of, their bionic limbs animated by a mechanical soul? Could the cuddly robots programmed to trigger hard-wired nurturing responses that are now being promoted as pets or companions for the young and old redefine what it means to love? Michael Chorost is a cyborg and his highly intelligent and searingly honest story about how it feels suggests that we should not be too worried. Having had very poor hearing from birth, he became totally deaf in 2001. His hearing is now entirely controlled by a computer sending signals to a ceramic and titanium unit surgically implanted into his inner ear — the cochlea.

As his subtitle suggests, hardware is not about to replace the incredibly complex “wetware” of our brains any time soon and his “bionic” ear propelled him towards other humans, not away. His search for love in the world of online dating proved just as challenging as learning to hear electronically.

Chorost is hugely admiring of the science. Lines of computer code perform a magic that ancient wizards could only dream of; conjuring his hearing back from the dead. After a year of frustrating experimentation with the implant, he gained about 80 per cent of the hearing of a normal person. That is all the more remarkable considering how crude the implant is compared to the real thing; in the cochlea there are 3,500 hair cells, each responsive to different aspects of sound; the implant has just 16 electrodes directly stimulating the auditory nerve, even though it does update that input 32 million times a second. In place of three different systems for modifying the input, there is just one.

You might think it just a matter of time before the hardware catches up but this is where it gets interesting. Even when a computer is delivering data to the brain, you cannot sidestep emotions. To his amazement, Chorost found that feelings and belief affected how much of a conversation he understood. And it gets more unpredictable; sometimes the meaning didn’t come through, no matter how involved he was. The workings of bionic implants are still far from robotic.

However, while his mental state was modifying the input, simultaneously the processors in the implant were physically reshaping his brain. The patterns of data arriving in the auditory cortex are unlike those generated by a normal ear so new connections grew between the neurons and his brain rewired itself to handle them.

This had a bizarre effect. Early on, at times all he could consciously hear of a conversation was auditory mush. Yet phrases and sentences would then float into his mind; his brain was processing data and turning it into meaning at an unconscious level, just as it would normally. What were missing were the smoothing processes that give the rest of us the illusion that that is no gap between hearing and understanding.

His bionic ear also stripped away another illusion, making him a living embodiment of the insight of the Enlightenment philosopher David Hume that we can never know anything about the real nature of the external world; all we know is the data that flows in from our senses. The rest of us perceive the world so seamlessly that it is hard to accept this emotionally, let alone to appreciate its implications.

Chorost experienced daily the arbitrary nature of sensory information. He could switch between two different programs, each processing sounds in different ways. By tweaking various parameters, he could theoretically have 230,000 versions of a sound. So which was the “real” one? A cyborg, he concluded, must view the world from multiple perspectives, making him a thorough-going relativist. The notion that any one ideology had a monopoly on “truth” became absurd; each of us constructs our own world.

But Rebuilt is more than just a philosophical exploration of cyborg reality; the narrative drive comes from its human dimension, as Chorost attempts, often painfully unsuccessfully, to find a girlfriend: being deaf from birth combined with a love of computers is no recipe for sexual success.

Aside from emphasising the biological side of the cyborg, his dating disasters highlight what really distinguishes humans from computers — the web of social connections in which we are embedded. Chorost’s body had become a battleground between the “hyper rational structures of technology” and the “warmth of human community”.

But the human won out as he realised that what really mattered was upgrading himself, not his software. His own psychological changes allowed him to make contact with people more deeply and intimately. If all cyborgs are as reflective and compassionate as Chorost we’ll be fine.
-”The heard instinct”, by Jerome Burne. The Times of London, May 13, 2006 (full review)

(The review below, by Charles Rubin, is my first mixed review. Rubin’s essay reviewed four books: Ramez Naam’s More Than Human, Joel Garreau’s Radical Evolution, James Hughes’ Citizen Cyborg, and mine. It takes a dim view of all four, so perhaps I got off lightly. But the review is thoughtful, and his criticisms of my book are well taken. I have two brief responses. First, Rubin overlooks the fact that I attack the transhumanist project in strong terms myself. Second, I now recognize, with the benefit of hindsight, that trying to interpret my experience through the lens of radical po-mo cybertheory created more problems for me than it solved. I’ve said in interviews that I’m done with the word “cyborg” and am ready to move on to more humanistic perspectives, which I plan to do in my second book. Still, I’m not sorry I made the effort to grapple with Donna Haraway’s seminal essay on the cyborg, which has fascinated many people for good reasons. I now think her essay is best read as a brilliantly poetic meditation on the blurring distinctions between humanity and its technology rather than as a reasoned argument.)

Michael Chorost’s Rebuilt: How Becoming Part Computer Made Me More Human is surely the most intriguing of all these books. Born with a severe hearing impairment, over the space of a few hours at age 36 Chorost finds himself losing what little hearing he had. As a result, he gets a cochlear implant, a computer that processes sound and sends signals directly to the auditory nerves, bypassing the hair cells in the ear that would normally do this job. In Chorost’s view, becoming this combination of man and machine makes him a cyborg, and he insists that being a cyborg means more than having an artificial joint or an implanted chip. “Real cyborg technology exerts control of some kind over the body,” he says. The software “makes if-then-else decisions and acts on the body to carry them out.”

The book chronicles his experiences learning how to use the hardware/software that allows him to hear, and how to re-learn it when the system is upgraded. Along the way, he deftly conveys a great deal of information about hearing, deafness, and the technology behind the implant. But even more tellingly, Chorost describes the intellectual and emotional changes wrought by seeing himself as a cyborg, particularly in relationship to his rather fragile love life. If, in the process, some readers may learn more than they wish to know about this wistful tale, there are rewards in Chorost’s gentle wit and honest introspection.

Yet honest introspection is not necessarily the same as deep introspection. While he has a strong sense of the richness of human experience and the limits of the capabilities of computers, there remains something troubling about Chorost’s insistence that the emotional changes he undergoes post-implant are the result of his new cyborg status. For example, when a woman to whom he is very attracted admits she doesn’t “feel the chemistry,” he is proud of himself for not kicking her out of his house, getting angry, or trying to make her feel guilty. He gives three different explanations for this new self-control. First, he had learned in a previous relationship, which he had broken off resentfully, that “love is like grace. It’s not something you can demand or even earn.” Second, while a man’s pressuring a woman to get what he wants could have survival value, as a cyborg “perhaps I am so new that the species just doesn’t know what to do with me…. I just do not know what the universe thinks my survival value is.” Finally, therefore, he should be “willing to lose with honor” because one day he may “win with honor.”

Chorost’s mention of honor suggests that his life experience is teaching him to behave like a gentleman in the face of rejection. One could also say that he is learning something of the nature of love—a theme that is important to the book. But Chorost reflects far less on these perennial aspects of being human than he does on the arcane and ideologically driven debates over what it means to be a cyborg. Even as he tellingly describes the human workings of his psyche, he cannot break free of the ideological lens—“I am a cyborg”—through which he sees and understands all his experiences. At an early stage of his implant experience, Chorost is unable to decide whether Donna Haraway’s essay “A Cyborg Manifesto” is “postmodernist bullshit, socialist rant, manic Nietzschean poetry, sly parody, brilliant cultural theory, or (quite possibly) all of the above.” But later he sees it as a “straightforward description of my life,” because of its postmodern emphasis on the abandonment of “master narratives” and “unitary identity.” “It is not that I had acquired a postmodern way of thinking. It was that I had acquired a postmodern body.” His story is a powerful example of how a technological mindset, not just the technologies themselves, can transform the experience of being human.

Of course, Chorost is entitled to his self-understanding. But he has put it before the public in a book. Given his sensible inclinations and the fact that life crises (such as his suddenly worsened deafness) can alter the shape of anyone’s life, we are entitled to wonder why it is so important for him to see himself as a cyborg rather than as a human being whose life is enriched by a new tool. Is this really the deepest reservoir of self-knowledge and moral wisdom available to him in modern times? Or does the self-creation and open-endedness he associates with being a cyborg appeal to him precisely because he lacks the intellectual tools to reflect on the constraining elements of a moral life?
-”The Rhetoric of Extinction”, by Charles Rubin. The New Atlantis, Winter 2006 (full review)

“Michael Chorost’s story is like no other today and his book is as riveting as it is timely. Rebuilt: How Becoming Part Computer Made Me More Human is an intimate depiction of important aspects of some of today’s most pressing controversies in emerging health science technology concerned with improving the human capabilities. Told from the vantage point of a self-reflective cochlear-implant patient who is a keenly perceptive writer, Rebuilt is a pivotal tale from inside a period of rapid and consequential techno-social transition.”
-Journal of Evolution and Technology, February 2006 (full review)

“In this moving account, the reader experiences what it’s like to live in the author’s world, from the first cell phone he’s able to plug into his implant to the first time he fumbles to remove the wires in the throes of passion. ‘[T]here’s nothing more isolating than deafness,’ Mr Chorost states, and his cochlear implant–his built-in computer chip–makes him feel more connected to the world than before. With his internal “World Wide Web” he learns to construct the environment around him and create a fulfilling new reality.”
-The Permanente Journal, Spring 2006 (full review)

“…Author Michael Chorost describes his personal journey from the world of silence to the world of hearing. The first chapter of this humorous yet touching memoir begins when Chorost loses his hearing on a business trip. With that first gripping experience, Chorost captures the reader with his description of how he transforms himself ‘from human to cyborg.’ This novel (sic) brings an interesting new voice to the field of cochlear implant technology and asks important questions such as, ‘What is real to us?’ and ‘What does it mean to be human?’”
-Volta Voices, Sept/Oct 2005, p. 16

“Chorost gets his implant, and proceeds to write a cyber-memoir about life with it. It’s a book that can go rapidly and delightfully from a snippet of the C code used by the device (and the discussion the programmers likely had about it), to a quote from Beethoven about the anguish of being deaf: ‘For me there can be no relaxation with my fellow men, no refined conversation, no exchange of ideas.’

At its core, this is a book about what we make of the contingency and variability of perception. For example, Chorost has to choose between the software programs available for his implant. Each, he finds, prompts the brain to generate markedly different sound tracks. To his mind, there’s a political lesson in this: There’s no one way of looking at — or listening to — the world. As any real cyborg can tell you, no “unidimensional view of Truth,” can be true.
-WBUR (Boston affliliate of National Public Radio), September 19, 2005 (full review)

“This autobiography is really the story of Michael Chorost’s cochlear implant and how it affected his life. While Chorost himself was not really cyborged, his hearing certainly was, and despite the silly marketing hype in the title, Chorost represents the first generation of what will surely continue to be a growing cohort of our population - people with technological replacements for biological functions. In this then lies the beauty and significance of this book. How a man deals with his implant, how his life changed because of the technology in his head, is a story that will be repeated often in the near future. Beyond the obvious benefits of restored hearing, this is also a story of new capabilities and limitations. For example, Chorost can plug a CD player directly into his head, while at the same time he is somewhat at the mercy of the computer on the chip implanted in his scalp. The book is a fascinating and candid account of what it’s like to be, at least in a small way, part robot.”
-Netsurfer Digest (recommended book), August 25, 2005 (Netsurfer Web site)

“In an intensely personal narrative, Chorost describes his tumultuous journey from life as a deaf person to life with artificial hearing. Hard of hearing as the result of childhood rubella, the author describes how he lived for 36 years using a combination of powerful hearing aids and lipreading. When, in 2001, his deafness progressed, Chorost decided to undergo cochlear-implant surgery, an operation in which a tiny sound-sensing apparatus is put into the damaged cochlea and then controlled via an external processor that’s worn behind the ear. Chorost describes how he worried that becoming part machine, a cyborg, would alter his sense of the world and his sense of self. Meanwhile, he deftly describes the biology of hearing and cochlear surgery. He conveys what it felt like to adjust to the implant and to hear the world as filtered through computer software. He reveals how the melding of machine and flesh, has given him a new perspective on life, love, and the senses.”
-Science News Books, August 13, 2005 (full review)

“The author faced the prospect of becoming a cyborg; a cochlear implant could give him back the hearing he lost completely in 2001. Would giving over one of his senses to the ones and zeroes of a computer chip diminish his humanity? Pondering the philosophical ramifications as he underwent the procedure, little did he suspect that it would reinvent him from the ground up, much like The 6 Million Dollar Man. Candid, thoughtful, and funny, with references sweeping from Shakespeare to science fiction, this memoir transcends the subject matter, striking at the core of what makes us all human; regardless of the accessories.”
-The Elliott Bay Book Company, July-August 2005 (full review)

"’Rebuilt: How Becoming Part Computer Made Me More Human’ is Chorost’s account of learning to hear again. Funny and thoughtful, the book is an extended meditation on the nature of perception, the human brain and the relationship between technology and humanity…”Rebuilt” may be the first of a new genre: the cyborg memoir…Chorost shows us the way. His awareness of life’s fragility, gained after making a determined effort to overcome its challenges, strikes me as the perfect answer to opponents of implants and genetic modification who worry about the effect of such tinkerings on our selves and souls. Memoirs such as “Rebuilt” will be invaluable guides in this new territory.”
-L.A. Times, July 31, 2005 (full review (now requires a fee to access))

-Reader’s Digest, August 2005, p. 210.

"His software has to be constantly debugged and updated; he has to relearn sounds and human voices based on what the implant tells him; and the little magnetic receiver thingie can fall off at inopportune times. Still, being a techie who constantly drops references to Dune and Star Trek and the brain’s “neural plasticity,” he’s the right guy for the device and the right guy to explain to us how it works."
-Seattle Weekly, July 6-12 (full review)

"At its most personal level, Rebuilt is a touching and inspiring coming-of-age story about a child who becomes a man, and a better human being, through a constant, lifelong struggle to overcome barriers and limitations imposed by his physical disability, by society and by his own unique, complex intelligence and psychology.  At its most instructional level, it is the clearest and most graphic description you will find of how deaf and hard-of-hearing people cope in a media-saturated world that increasingly makes the ability to hear, assimilate, process, understand, regurgitate, and communicate an increasing overload of information a requirement for success in life. But at its most philosophical level, it explores the shifting sands of the reality — the many versions of reality — that we all experience and must try to comprehend in an era where technological innovation, accumulation of knowledge, and conflicts between cultures, societies and competing political systems are not just progressing more rapidly than in any previous period of history but accelerating at geometric rates…Michael Chorost’s book is important not just for those who want to understand what it’s like to be hard of hearing or what it’s like to get a cochlear implant.  It’s for anyone looking for ways to cope with and better understand a world where change is accelerating at a seemingly impossible pace."
-HearingMojo.com (Dave Copithorne), June 26, 2005 (full review)

"Harper Lee once said that we can’t understand another person until we climb into his skin and walk around in it. This fascinating book is a chance to do that, and you’ll be wiser for the experience. On July 7, 2001, at age 36, Michael Chorost became deaf. One of about 20,000 babies born hearing-impaired after a rubella epidemic hit the United States in the 1960s, he had always worn hearing aids. But on that terrifying day, just as he arrived in Nevada on a business trip, sound receded without warning and his hearing aids were suddenly useless. Three months later Chorost became a ‘cyborg’ (a human whose body is controlled, at least in part, by a machine) when a computerized cochlear implant surgically embedded in his head was ‘booted up’ and sound returned to his life in a rush of static. Adjusting to the implant was difficult as Chorost faced the physical, social, ethical and philosophical implications of both his handicap and the technology that offered solutions to it. With wit and candor, he welcomes us to the debate and shows us what it’s like to struggle to hear."
-The Arizona Republic, June 17, 2005

“Remember TV’s ‘The Six Million-Dollar Man’? (Tech Talk dates itself to say, yes — sigh! — it does.) Cyber-hero Steve Austin tackled baddies with his super strength and wrestled with the inner demons his mechanization spawned, leaving no doubt that becoming half machine had a down side.

Chorost, a science writer and educator, can relate. After having a computer implanted in his skull to restore his lost hearing, life for him becomes both better and more complex. Chorost can ‘hear,’ but with side effects: Refrigerator magnets stick to his head, and he can plug himself into his CD player. But beyond the quirks looms a thought-provoking consideration: Can we trust what our mechanical senses are telling us?

‘Rebuilt’ offers a fascinating look at what it means to be wired in a wired world.”
-St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 16, 2005 (full review)

"But it is the technology’s human depth that he mines to best effect. Chorost draws in his dating life, his work as a researcher of educational technology, the tricky task of hearing conversation at a crowded party, his friendships, his writing group.  For a man relearning the way the world sounds, all of these pose special challenges - but yield special rewards when the frustrations of impaired hearing are conquered…And maybe that is the reality this book leaves behind: that there’s no machine like human touch. The cochlear implant is expensive, inconvenient sometimes, and hard to get used to. But for this one man, it has been a bridge back to other people. The deepest human longing is for intimacy and for community, and getting there is cheap at any price."
-The Buffalo News, June 14, 2005 (Full review)

"Born hard of hearing because of the rubella epidemic of the early 1960s, Chorost went completely deaf in his mid-thirties. He’d just earned his Ph.D., and the self-professed ‘geek’ found himself more socially inept and isolated than ever before. Things changed after he got a cochlear implant to improve his hearing: Chorost became part man, part machine, and to his surprise and delight, he became more human, not less, when technology took over his life.  Chorost’s graceful, poetic turns of phrase and dry, self-deprecating humor take what could have been a dry technological story and breathe life into it, explaining the technological component with precision while taking the reader on a real roller-coaster ride of emotion through the process.  Readers who are hearing-impaired, know someone who is, or who have come out of more than one rock concert with ringing ears — this is a book that will make you think and, ultimately, make you smile."
-Library Journal

"By far the most original, honest, and authoritative book I’ve read on human-machine interfaces."
-Chronicle for Higher Education (John Horgan), June 3, 2005 (Full review)

"An artfully frank account, Chorost’s story will vitally engage people interested in the increasingly prevalent surgical procedure."
-Booklist

"Readers will find much food for thought on the implications of medical technology and what constitutes our humanity in this beautifully written debut."
-Publishers Weekly, May 16, 2005

"A real marvel is Michael Chorost, author of Rebuilt: How Becoming Part Computer Made Me More Human. Born hard of hearing after his mother contracted rubella during pregnancy, Chorost lost the rest of his hearing one random terrifying day in adulthood. Rebuilt tells the story of his choice to undergo surgery for a cochlear implant, a complex apparatus of chips and electrodes and processors that triggers the auditory nerves in a pattern the brain learns to interpret as sound. With a background in computer programming and literary study, Chorost is better suited than Stelarc to explore what it means to become a kind of cyborg, and he brings to his fascinating subject great intellectual clarity, the habit of self-examination, and a willingness to expose himself.

It turns out that surgery is just the beginning, and Chorost calls for a more systematic training program for patients struggling to integrate technology into their bodies in order to become "more human." He is particularly compelling on the inner workings of the code that sorts out sounds into different frequencies and the disorienting effects of the two different software programs that control the implant’s electrode array: ‘One new version of the world would be unsettling enough,’ says Chorost, who in the aftermath of the surgery felt less like a hearing person than ‘the receptor of a flood of data, which I was constantly stitching into meaningful language a half-second or so after I actually heard it.’ Stranger and more unsettling than Stelarc’s body art, Chorost’s celebration of the technology that allowed him to hear again shows the futility of drawing a line between man and machine."
-Village Voice (Jenny Davidson), May 17, 2005 (full review)

"There is also an argument to be made that we have some control over our environment, and therefore if we want to change our behavior, we should try to change the world around us – or, failing that, at least our personal circumstances. That’s why I’m excited about Rebuilt, a new book about what it’s like to become a cyborg, by science writer Michael Chorost.

Chorost is one of thousands of deaf people who have had a computer called a cochlear implant surgically placed in their skull to restore their hearing. Providing an interface between auditory nerves in the ear and the outer world of sound, the computer uses an elaborate system of antennae and processing software to translate noise into signals that the brain learns to decode as speech, music, wind, whatever. In Rebuilt Chorost explores – in moving detail – what it’s like to have a computer mediating your environment and social experiences.

His life has changed in all kinds of ways, not the least of which is that he’s realized there’s no such thing as a "natural" or "true" form of sensory input. "One’s most basic relationships to reality can be amended and edited and upgraded; reality is ultimately a matter of software," he writes. And we see this literally happening to him, as software upgrades to his computer alter his perceptions. When he first gets the cochlear implant, Chorost hears the characteristic "beep" of the microwave as a weird blatting noise. An upgrade restores the beeping he heard before he went deaf.

But what about all the kids growing up with these computers embedded in their heads – and there are many of them – who don’t get that particular upgrade? Are they missing something because they hear microwave ovens "wrong"? This seemingly trivial question goes to the heart of the debate over changing the world in order to change ourselves. It asks whether changing our surroundings, our physical reality, changes us as people.

Some would say when we profoundly alter our bodies to change our social relationships, or attempt massive cultural transformations by changing educational or economic systems, we are wasting our time. There is no way to keep Pinker’s twins from being obnoxious on elevators because it’s just part of their unalterable selves. But what if we took their elevators away? Or gave them the ability to hear the sounds of discomfort their stupid jokes produced in people around them? Might they not consider changing their ways?

With Rebuilt, Chorost seems to argue that they would. It’s the most hopeful thing I’ve read in quite a while."
-San Francisco Bay Guardian (Annalee Newitz), June 7, 2005 (full review)

"A touching and humorous story about how the author, a San Francisco writer, had a tiny computer imbedded in his head after he went completely deaf in his 30s. The funny part is how refrigerator magnets stick to his head and in his wit in writing about his experience. But it is also a thoroughly human story, explaining the science that gave him one of his senses back, in an artificial manner since his "hearing" hasn’t been restored, just recreated."
-Palo Alto Weekly, June 1, 2005

BOOK JACKET BLURBS

“A deeply enjoyable book. Chorost ponders what is ‘real’ to us in our natural state and what our ‘natural’ state really is, and how what is real to us will change over time, and thus change us. Chorost is at the vanguard of where most baby-boomers will end up—part human and part machine.”
—Rodney Brooks, director of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab and author of Flesh and Machines

“Chorost takes us on an amazing intellectual journey as he moves from deafness to computer-assisted hearing. He asks big questions about the nature of reality, the meaning of being human, and how much we can bear to be ‘improved.’ Chorost has a fine ear for language, and writes with intelligence, wit, and not a little bit of what he calls ‘rueful irony.’ A lovely book.”
—Robin Marantz Henig, author of Pandora’s Baby and The Monk in the Garden

“This is a terrific book—an eyewitness bulletin from the borderlands where technology and bodies clash and meld. I read it through in one huge chomp, shouting and chortling at this adventure or that. Chorost pulls off the high-wire stunt of conveying scientific accuracy about a complex biomedical topic while writing with the cliffhanger excitement of an action adventure videogame.”
—Allucquére Rosanne Stone, author of The War of Desire and Technology at the Close of the Mechanical Age

“Chorost is a quite amazing new writer whose prose spirits the reader across the sound barrier from deafness to a new world in which an essential human function is replaced by a tiny computer chip. In Rebuilt, he introduces us to the startling brave new world of bionic replacement parts with himself as the patient, explorer, cyborg, and a more fully human being.”
-Sol Stein, author of Stein on Writing and (with James Baldwin) Native Sons

“Rebuilt is a heartfelt exploration of technologically mediated perception and the impact of a cochlear implant on one man’s experience and sense of self. Chorost’s journey is that of humanity itself.”
—Andy Clark, author of Natural-Born Cyborgs

“An exemplary first-person account of becoming a cyborg. Rebuilt combines technical and philosophical erudition with fine writing.”
-Chris Hables Gray, author of Cyborg Citizen: Politics in the Posthuman Age and editor of The Cyborg Handbook

“Chorost has written a wonderfully fascinating account of banishing total deafness. His experience is a harbinger of the future. Beethoven would be encouraged.”
-Manfred Clynes, coiner of the term “cyborg”