My ex-boyfriend Josh was born mostly deaf, but had some hearing in one ear thanks to a cochlear implant (CI) — a spiral of electrodes threaded into his cochlea to stimulate the auditory nerve, bypassing damaged parts of the ear. The surgery, which is irreversible, wipes out any residual hearing in the operated ear. (It’s a major invasive procedure — fortunately a one-time thing — that puts the patient at risk of facial paralysis.) A microphone connects to a removable external processor that converts sound to digital code; the code is transmitted to the implanted mechanism by way of a magnet. When fed through the cochlea, the decoded digital information is perceived as sound.

Josh wore the external part of the CI during most of his waking hours and we got by with lip-reading and basic signing whenever he took it off. He never once complained about my snoring. If I wanted to have a private conversation with him in the room, I could just detach the magnet on the side of his head. It was also a fun party trick to announce that my boyfriend’s head could stick to the fridge.

Not everyone likes a cyborg, however. In fact, many deaf people would be offended at the suggestion that they do something so drastic to artificially augment their hearing. Last year at Gallaudet, the federally chartered university for the deaf in DC, Josh and the writer Michael Chorost co-taught a class designed to address the deaf community’s division regarding the use of cochlear implants. There’s concern that the technology will eventually render an entire language — American Sign Language — obsolete.

A majority of deaf children are born to hearing parents, many who would sooner opt for insurance-covered implants for their kids than years of sign education, audiologist visits and hearing aids, which are pricey and usually are not covered by medical insurance. Those against CI argue that sign language is categorically better than oral language, and that orally educated deaf children with CIs are missing out on gaining entrance into a rich community and culture. If the CI business “cures” all deaf people, the implications for the signing community are dire.

Gallaudet is a signing university with a vociferous pro-ASL population. In 2006, a newly appointed president was voted out of office ostensibly because she had been educated orally and didn’t learn sign until her twenties. Mike and Josh’s class looked at how other minorities have dealt with “threats” to their communities and tried to apply the lessons from those experiences to suggest ways that signing deaf people can survive the increase use of CIs.

The other day I asked Mike — who wrote Rebuilt and the amazing cochlear implant story in Wired — what he thought was the most exciting stuff happening in the world of CIs right now. Really, I was fishing for things that would improve my life, should I ever date another half-bot: How about solar-charged receivers that don’t require batteries (which used to die so conveniently during fights)? A line of accessories that could keep the thing in place during snogging? A remote control that could allow me to manipulate his every move, want and desire?

Mike didn’t think there was that much to report — I was a little disappointed he didn’t mention cat CIs! The future, according to Mike, is technology that facilitates two-way communication. Hearing people who dream of super-human auditory abilities probably won’t be lining up to get CIs any time soon.

“The engineering is too difficult and the risks are too great,” Mike told me. He sees implantation surgery going in a more practical direction. “People might be willing to get them to facilitate new forms of communication that to us would seem like telepathy,” he said. “I don’t mean the transmission of speech; there’s no point to that, since we can do that. I’m talking about the transmission of brain states — fear, alertness, anger — and, in a certain sense, of memories.”

In short, CI technology, as crazy science-fiction-esque as it seems, is already looking like the old grandpa in the rocking chair, nodding knowingly while the pro-CI and anti-CI groups still battle on like so many Hatfields and McCoys. “The real breakthroughs in neurotech will come not from doing existing things better, but from doing entirely new things,” he said. From an outside perspective, it seems that, if the two sides were to unite and embrace implant technology, the deaf community could come out at the forefront of cyborgology. The deaf community has already been profoundly effected by neurotechnology. It’s a point of view Mike argued elegantly in a much-debated 2007 speech he gave at Gallaudet:

We are heading into a future where the technology is opening up profoundly new possibilities for communication and group awareness…Cochlear implants are the cutting edge of a field called neurotechnology—the science of developing completely new kinds of ways of interfacing with the body and the brain…Who better than the deaf community to actively seize the lead in developing communications technologies that interact directly with the nervous system? And to experiment with new social forms to explore their uses? We already have one foot—more than one foot—in that world.

Tomorrow, I may get a brain implant that will help me not repeat myself or remember where I put my keys. Or remember where I put my keys. A large part of the deaf community, however, have already ventured farther down that road than I may ever see. Or, for the matter, hear.

Anna Jane Grossman is the author of Obsolete: An Encyclopedia of Once-Common Things Passing Us By (Abrams Image) and the creator of iamobsolete.net. Her writing has appeared in dozens of publications, including the New York Times, Salon.com, the Associated Press, Elle and the Huffington Post. She has a complicated relationship with technology, but she does have an eponymous website: AnnaJane.net. Follow her on Twitter at @AnnaJane.

The idea of growing tissue in a lab is nothing new, so why not breasts? It’s fun to think about, but there is a serious side to all of this as well. We know that there are benefits for patients suffering from disease and injury, but we have to ask ourselves: What implications could this technology have for elective plastic surgery?

Back in 2006, scientists discovered a clue to growing new breast tissue using mammary stem cells. While this development could lead to drugs that could stop cancer, it could also give plastic surgeons the ability to grow new breast tissue. Today we discovered that Australian scientists are starting trials of a procedure called Neopec that involves implanting a biodegradable, synthetic chamber containing a woman’s fat tissue in the breast. The chamber acts as “scaffolding” for new breast tissue to grow on.

As awesome as all of this sounds, think about the bigger picture here. Today, there can be a stigma associated with excessive physical augmentation. Do you think our views would change if a woman (or a man for that matter) could be “naturally” augmented through cell manipulation? [Telegraph via PopSci and Times Online]

The use of a high-speed digital signal processor allows the provision of “intelligent information” to the implant (and the nerve cells) by using tuneable software to approximate the information processing normally carried out by the healthy retina. The entire process enables patients to optimise their visual perception during the learning phase. Indeed, using the patient’s feedback on perception as an input for the tuning of The Pocket Processor is the unique, patent-protected feature of the System and constitutes the ‘learning’ capability of the Learning Retinal Implant System.

The next logical step is, of course, enhancing vision beyond what we’re born with. When these things become optional for people with healthy vision, you’ll know we’re really living in the future. [IMI Devices]

While according to studies done on pigs, the entire procedure was safe and caused no internal damage, I somehow wouldn’t trust something as precious as my boobs to the Cup&Up. Line up for other procedures that worked in animals, but please just stick to wrapping bras around your breasts. [Isreal21c via MedGadget]

Better still, for squeamish emergency room pansies like myself, this is a “brief” outpatient procedure, say the inventors at VisionCare Ophthalmic Technologies.

Just pop a telescope in your bad eye and you’ll be avoiding home furniture by the evening. Well, after a round of intense physical therapy anyway. It seems the new vision takes some getting used to, although none of the 200 patients who tested this over the past five years reported any falling down or injury, said Dr. Henry Hudson, a retina specialist in Tuscon.

And while the devices won’t allow patients to view faraway stars (not that powerful), they will allow them to see partial faces where there was once a gaping hole in their vision. “People can use it to recognise faces in a social setting,” said Dr. Janet P. Szlyk. “That’s a huge advance.”

A Food and Drug Administration advisory panel gave the tele-eyes their unanimous approval in March, and the full board is expected to give its blessing later this year. Europe is already using it. [NYT via Nick Bilton's Twitter]

It also, one would think, looks pretty awesome to wear. All we have to go on now are these illustrations, but I would love to see this in actual use. The device has finished clinical trials, and experts on ophthalmic devices have unanimously recommended FDA approval. Amazing stuff.

[VisionCare via Medgadget]

Up until now, many immunotherapy treatments involved chemicals and drugs designed to coax immune cells into attacking tumors. However, these methods were only about 60 percent effective in clinical trials. This new polymer implant does all of the work inside the body, and has increased the survival rate of mice with a deadly melanoma from 0 to 90 percent in past studies.

First, it attracts dendritic cells by releasing a kind of chemical signal called a cytokine. Once the cells are there, they take up temporary residence inside spongelike holes within the polymer, allowing time for the cells to become highly active.

The polymer carries two signals that serve to activate dendritic cells. In addition to displaying cancer-specific antigens to train the dendritic cells, it is also covered with fragments of DNA, the sequence of which is typical of bacteria. When cells grab on to these fragments, they become highly activated. “This makes the cells think they’re in the midst of infection,” Mooney explains. “Frequently, the things you can do to cells are transient—especially in cancer, where tumors prevent the immune system from generating a strong response.” This extra irritant was necessary to generate a strong response, the Harvard researchers found.

A lot of questions about the effectiveness of this approach in humans have yet to be answered, but if all goes well the hope is that polymer implants could be not only helpful with cancer patients, but also with those afflicted with immune disorders. [Technology Review]

A few years ago a scientist implanted such a device into the brain of a woman with a low sex drive and turned her into a very sexually active woman. She didn’t like the sudden change, so the wiring in her head was removed.

That accidental discovery was the result on research of a chip–which creates small shocks deep in the brain–already being used to fight Parkinson’s disease, and has prompted scientists to explore a new chip that will work in the orbitofrontal cortex. This is the part of the brain that is connected to the sense of pleasure from eating and sex.

If you have read Milo Manara’s Clic (NSFW, if you look it up in Google), you know how this really works. But don’t expect a machine like that yet. According to the team investigating it, we are still 10 years away from actually developing one that won’t require invasive brain surgery.

Meanwhile, back in America, Dr Stuart Meloy is creating his own version of the machine that concentrates on the spinal cord. He is calling it the Orgasmatron after the device from Woody Allen’s Sleeper. And no, I’m not joking. [Daily Mail]

According to researchers, when someone becomes paralysed, the neurons that control movement remain active, only missing the actual bridge between the brain and the body. These neurons remain alive and emit signals for years after paralysis.

The electrodes are able to detect where the strongest movement signal is coming from, and attach itself to that area of the brain. So far connections only last for about four weeks or so, but researchers hope to improve on this implement the breakthrough on humans. [New Scientist]

I implanted a RFID chip in my hand. I injected the chip myself from supplies bought on the internet. This tag is readable from up to 2 inches from my hand.

I am currently using it to open my handgun safe for instant access. I can have a gun in hand in one second in blackness without fumbling with buttons or codes.

If you are convinced that this is the “Mark of the Beast”, then from one Christian to another I hope you read the Book of Revelation and apply more understanding to it that what you hear from those who only offer fear.

Get your Gideons/veterinary surgery kits out and check out Quethe’s full posting at BoingBoing Gadgets or YouTube [BBG]