I AM glad this meeting is a workshop, because most of what I have to suggest means exactly that, work. I hope I can convince you it is work worthwhile. My own personal and probably too optimistic opinion is that an artificial inner ear will eventually be able to provide at least marginal hearing for some persons with sensorineural deafness. However, it should be perfectly clear that such a device is at least several years in the future, and not applicable to every deaf person. I am not referring to the crude kinds of artificial stimulation of the auditory nerve that have been known for a hundred years. Such methods might prove adequate for some sophisticated form of Morse code, but that is about all. If we are to achieve even marginally adequate transmission of sensory information by artificial methods we need to provide a great variety of auditory sensations