“Technology (the word) gets batted around a lot. How do you
define it? Change, improvement, complication? One definition I buy is
that technology is a better way to do something, like laser-blasting
away cancerous lesions inside your guts through a tube and using a
television camera to make the pin-head sized cancer look at big as a
nickel. It’s being able to resize digital images and obliterate distracting
backgrounds. Or, it’s containing oil spills and sucking up the oil before
it wrecks things even worse.”

-Grant Peterson

There is some consensus among audiologists and hearing aid manufacturers that most customers want a hearing aid designed so well that they forget its even there. Hence we’ve seen the volume dial disappear and complex algorithms that automatically “sense” different environments- a raucous party, an echoing hall, the drone of airplane travel- and put the hearing aid in an appropriate mode. The automatic transmission of hearing aids is here. Forget about the hearing aid- its doing the work for you.

Other industries follow this same mantra- Shimano, purveyor of beautiful made bike parts, designs easily indexible shifters that work so well one doesn’t need the skill or finesse that friction shifting of the past required. Before indexing, you would know to let off the pedal a bit in anticipation of a needed shift, and be ready for an upcoming hill. Now the shifting is easily done without those steps.

The lower end of the DSLR camera market follows the same idea. Major camera manufacturers, like Canon and Nikon, design these cameras so that someone without any skill or desire to read a manual can pick up the camera and go. Manual white balance, bracketing, aperture priority, and other fine tuning is either completely left out or tucked away deep inside the menus. Utter simplicity. Forget about the camera.

I’m not convinced that these simplifications are an improvement or a better way of doing things. I don’t trust a hearing aid to figure out what volume I need or want or how much noise cancellation I need for a given situation. I know from experience that the hearing aid gets it wrong and shifts into the wrong gear. Some of the quirks that hearing aids had more often in the past- namely that screeching feedback and unnecessary and uncomfortable loudness- are improvements we can be thankful for. I didn’t want to be reminded of my hearing aids by hearing high pitch noise or shouting. But I don’t want to forget my hearing aids entirely.

The world of sound is complex and the hearing aid can’t read my mind. Don’t get me wrong- I understand that there’s a huge pool of people out there that don’t like to think about techy things and don’t want to fiddle around with their tiny hearing aid. It feels like a chore to remember which mode to engage in order to cancel out the loud din in the background at a party. However, I’m not entirely convinced that the hearing aid will do the right thing. And furthermore, the hearing aid user can easily learn how to adjust their hearing aid in five minutes tops. In return they take control of their hearing and needs. The hearing device is no longer in control of them.

I want a volume dial back. Sometimes I want to make the aid louder than it would decide to sensibly be on if it were thinking like a rational computer, which I’m not. Maybe I’m at a job interview and I decide to pump up the volume for a bit- since I want to pay attention to every word. Multiple modes are a good thing- for music, listening to conversation at a table, conversation in my home, the radio and TV, e.t.c. No one algorithm can cover them all and the hearing aid certainly cannot read my mind. Sometimes what seems like the best mode just isn’t. Yes, it takes a bit of learning and some effort, but really not much.

I want control over amplification of a number of different frequencies. The audiologist does that job for me- but it doesn’t mean I can’t get some value out adjusting the aid myself. Unfortunately that just won’t happen. Its too much to ask for reasons that are neither here nor there as they say. Instead, I just get access to this equipment myself, through certain channels out there. I’m extremely happy to have the option to fine tune my hearing aid, even in the wrong direction, on purpose. There’s a valuable learning process that takes place as a result.

Market research is not telling the manufactures to put more manual control in their hearing aids. The information they are getting is telling them to make more automated hearing aids. Its a great thing to design a hearing aid that you don’t know is there- its works so well that you forget about it. That doesn’t have to come at the expense of eliminating manual control- which will always be the best way to take control of your hearing loss, disability, yaddda yadda, in a rich world of sound that swirls chaotically around us.

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