“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then quit. 

There’s no point in being a damn fool about it.”

If you can’t change an industry – change its foundation.

-A. Doolittle

The Bates cochlear implant threatens the implant industry. Two centuries ago, researchers chose a model of how the ear worked that they knew was flawed—but it was workable enough to remain for two centuries. However, they made a mistake: they used that flawed model to construct an electronic ear—the cochlear implant—and the flaws couldn’t be hidden. The sound quality is poor, and cochlear implant wearers will grow up in a world without music.

During the Cold War, the electronics engineer John K. Bates Jr. was tasked with designing an electronic “radar” ear. Recognizing that the flawed ear model wouldn’t work, John created a model to describe how to give an electronic ear the capabilities of a natural ear.

John recognized their mistake and decided to design an alternative implant. In 1999, he introduced a tested cochlear implant design that gave the wearer a life of inclusion and a world of music. However, John and his cochlear implant were ignored—not because it didn’t work, but because it did.

John’s implant challenged two centuries of acoustic research, devalued researchers’ education and bodies of work, and made the products of multiple billion-dollar manufacturers obsolete. John’s implant was an existential threat to the industry, and they chose their self-interest over the cochlear implant wearers they were supposed to help.

When John passed away in 2022, his family gave me the records of his decades of cochlear implant research and asked that I try to give his life meaning. I created the Bates Cochlear Implant Project. I also faced the same rejection as John, but I’m the head of Elegant Disruptions and have a history of introducing disruptive technologies, and I’m not easily dismissed.

Researchers studying ear diseases admit they cannot explain how the ear works, particularly the basilar membrane. They know it is a tapped delay line, but the current model offers no clue as to how it works. I suggest it is more than a coincidence that the core of John’s implant and the basilar membrane both use a tapped delay line. I know how John’s implant works very well. However, they, too, have not listened to an outsider challenging the foundation of their work.

John’s family and I have never considered financial gain our motive. So, I’m giving the math at the core of his implant to the world—particularly programmers. I’ve used the core of his implant for waveform analysis for decades. A tapped delay line replaces the mathematically intensive current tool—Fourier Analysis. Programming languages have no discipline boundaries, and I am giving them the seeds that will eventually destroy the foundation of the cochlear implant industry. In time, cochlear implant wearers will be given the life they were denied.

However, our transition sacrifices our ability to fund the effort required to support programmers worldwide. We must supply documentation, code examples, online support, and more to ensure success.

If we fail, there will be no one to follow us. Who will believe there is anything of value in notebooks rejected by the cochlear implant industry? Who will bother to look? If we fail, current cochlear implant wearers and the millions to follow will be forever denied a life of inclusion.

We need your support. It’s not the amount but the act that counts. Go to GoFundMe.com/ and join us in helping to change the future of cochlear implant wearers.