Hi all,
The article I chose was "The Design and Function of Cochlear Implants" by Michael F. Dorman and Blake S Wilson. The article discusses how Cochlear Implants affect adult's and children's hearing and what advance we can expect from the technology. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Cochlear Implant, it is a surgically implanted device that stimulates inner hair cells to electrically transmit sound through the cochlear to the auditory nerve and to the brain to be interpreted as sound. The article found that the Cochlear Implant should be implanted before the age of 7 or if the person has a good foundation for language. Some advances we can expect are Electrical Acoustic Stimulation and a Drug-Delivery System to preserve hair cells in the cochlea.
My critique was about the fact that the article did not discuss the controversy between the Deaf and the Hearing world. The authors state they will not be discussing this and will only function on the science; in my opinion, the authors should have discussed it to support the idea of hard technological determinism which the article seemed to support. I also felt that the societal implications for hard technological determinism of the Cochlear Implant should have been discussed. The Cochlear Implant will inevitable diminish Deaf culture and the use of American Sign Language.
That was just a brief summary of what I said in class. If you would like me to elaborate on anything please feel free to ask. I am eager to see what comments you have about the article and my critique :)
During my undergrad, I took a class called Deaf Culture and Heritage and I absolutely loved it. I was very interested in your presentation because Cochlear implants was a big issue we discussed in the course. I personally believe that for the deaf culture it would be difficult to accept something like the cochlear implant that would take someone's entire culture into question.
ReplyDeleteChristine I agree with your critique, technology can take us away from human issues as if technology solves a problem. When we get into the meaning of technology then we find that we have to consider the human pesrpective that affects how we actually use it and what the using of it causes. So it is not as simple as a solution to a problem.
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