Cochlear Implants:

Johnathan,

Okay, here's my view on ASL and Cochlear Implants:

I think nearly all parents of nearly all children (hearing or deaf) should begin teaching their child both spoken and signed language from birth.  It is now a well documented fact that infants can begin effectively communicating via sign language much earlier than they can via spoken language.  The vast majority of research and documentation I've seen also points to the fact that learning ASL actually facilitates the acquisition of spoken language.  This is due to the fact that ASL promotes early cognitive development which in turn supports concurrent and later English acquisition.

This belief isn't about "ASL purism" it is about providing the child (whether hearing or deaf) with the maximum communication resources for his or her mental development. 
Here's an analogy: Suppose you are in a city in Kansas and wanted your child to be able to ride a surf board on the ocean waves.  Lacking access to the ocean you might choose to provide your child with a "skateboard."  Your child will develop valuable skills such as balance, timing, estimation, planning, and so forth.  Later suppose he goes to the beach.  As a result of having learned how to skateboard he will have a much easier time learning how to surf.

This is called "horizontal transfer of learning."

The beautiful thing is that as an adult this person can now choose whether he wants to spend his time skateboarding or if he wants to go surfing--or both!  (In real life though, as an adult he ends up going to work and has no time for either surfing or skateboarding!!!)

If only learning to speak were as easy for a Deaf child as it is for a hearing child.  But it isn't.  So the concept of opportunity cost comes into play.  It is indeed possible for a blind man to become an expert at hitting a distant target with a bow and arrow.  To do so he would need to try and fail many, many times.  It might take him years, but sure enough, eventually he could hit the target.  The question is, what opportunities did that man miss during those years of practicing hitting an unseen target?  How many clocks could he have built, or clients could he have counseled, or bedtime stories could he have told?  How many parties could he have gone to? How much fun could he have had or good could he have done?  Focusing on developing that particular skill cost him a huge amount in terms of lost opportunities. What if he tried for years to become good at archery but never succeeded? Perhaps he would have been better off using his time more effectively?  Similarly perhaps it is better for Deaf children to spend their time more effectively by learning ASL instead of trying to hit a target they can't see? Or rather--voice a target they can't hear?  Who is to say that it isn't better to fully participate in a very small world than to marginally participate in a very large world. 

Now, about cochlear implants, consider the progress of computer processors from the early eighties to today.  Back in 1981 IBM came out with an "8088" chip that clocked in at about 4.77 MHz. If you are not familiar with the term hertz, it is a way of measuring how many operations a computer can cycle through per second.  One hertz equals one "operation" per second or the ability of the computer to process one instruction per second. One megahertz, or MHz, is roughly equal to a million operations per second. A gigahertz, or GHz, is roughly a billion cycles per second. 

Over a period of 25 years single-chip commercially available processors progressed from 4 MHz to 4 GHz.   Which is to say they became literally a thousand times faster.