I would recommend this book, If someone would like to study echolocation further: http://www.amazon.com/Beginners-Guide-Echolocation-Visually-Impaired/dp/1478371080

And from a computer musicians point of view: Its not a miracle. Its just a reverb.

you can tell ben has been doing this since the day he was born and can hear everything around him so its possible people may not even notice ben is blind or doesn’t know which direction to go too.

and to top it all off i think hes going to do fine in the future because ben hearing is very accurate and can mostly find what he needs except i dont think he can drive but as long as his friends or family help him he can pretty much work at any job as long as it doesn’t require physical things to do.

I have no clue how many people would be capable of accomplishing what he can do though (to respond to the comment about “super-cripple stories”).

You might as well smell light. 

Also, lot of the “experiments” presented in this video are not experiments at all.  Getting him to guess which two objects out of four are the same gives Ben a very high chance of getting it right simply by guessing.

As always with a science related post on this blog, the writer illustrates a poor understanding of what science is about.  “The 10-minute video below suggests that scientists have only begun to understand what humans are capable of.”  Of course we have only begun to understand.  I find that comment smug, in that to me, it implies that scientists claim to have it all figured out.  Any scientist I’ve even spoke to usually points out how little we know, not every scientist is a hack like Ray Kurzweil.

To end on a bittersweet note, Ben seemed like someone who made it his mission to enjoy life.  It’s too bad that his life ended at such a young age as his curious nature and determination is something that we need more of.

As for super-cripple stories like these, which seem to be the only interest stories written about the otherly abled, they make me worry for those that don’t live up to such an amazing standard.  Seems it’s always the tale of the one-armed pitcher who still throws a 99 mile/hr fastball or some harrowing triumph over adversity, and rarely is it a, oh hey, I can’t walk and have a boring life with regular, everyday problems, bills to pay same as you.

It’s sort of analogous to what Derrida said on the war against drugs and what Foucault wrote about the Victorian’s chronicling of a range of physical and social abnormalites: we are implicitly and ambiguously defining who we are, what it means to be Human, not in any positivist sense but rather by detailing what we’re against, or at the very least, what is invisible and what is remarkable, what is spectacle, and who is Other…

Unlike Ben Underwood, my hearing is different than a normal human’s. I hear higher and lower ranges than most people. My hearing has not diminished with age as it should have.

Even without super ears, human echolocation is feasible for anyone who knows what they’re listening for. I think it’s a great tool for the blind and somewhat-sighted.