Color blindness and its illuminations

In 1974, not long after an antenna was implanted in his skull, the British artist Neil Harbisson became the first person in history to be officially recognized as a cyborg.1 A cyborg—short for cybernetic organism—is a living thing formed from the integration of organic and mechanical parts. Before becoming a cyborg, Harbisson struggled as an art student afflicted with achromatopsia, an extremely rare, congenital form of color blindness that allowed him to see only black, white, and shades of gray. After an antenna was implanted in his occipital bone, Harbisson, at age 22, acquired the ability to receive electromagnetic waves from the surrounding air, and transform them using an implanted computer chip into carefully programmed tones. Harbisson is able to hear colors, including those that people with normal vision cannot see. Harbisson regards his antenna as no less a body part than any bone or tendon. When he was caught up in a public demonstration during which jostling by the police caused damage to his antenna, he felt manhandled, the victim of a particularly grievous form of personal injury. Harbisson’s success as a highly innovative color blind artist is meritorious, not only in its own right, but for the way it illuminates the under-appreciated nature of color Color blindness and its illuminations