So you may have noticed that I haven’t gotten much up here lately….in fact it’s been about a month. But I’ve been super busy with work (among other things) and I have yet to replenish the lost authors for the site, and until I get at least 2 more daily writers I wont be back to normal. So till then…I dont know, let your intelligence wither away. Now then….

Who hear loves being able to speak?(see what I did there?) anyone? oh yes everyone. Now what would you say if I told you that, if I so desired (*!SPOILER!*: I do), I could render you incapable of speech. Well thanks to some (what I assume to be evil) Japanese researchers it is totally possible. The “speech jammer” is composed of a handheld directional microphone with a few attachments on it:

1. an on-board CPU
2. a directional speaker

The jammer works by listening in with the directional microphone and then replaying the same sounds back directly toward you. Right about now you’re probably saying “Dude your friggin nuts, how does that stop you from speaking?”. I know it sounds nuts, especially since you would expect the device to play back the opposite wavelength to cancel out the sound entirely, but there is a “science” behind it. It’s called DAF, Delayed Auditory Feedback, and it’s something you have had a similar interaction with. See the speaker doesn’t work be playing back the sound per se, it works by playing back the sound 0.2 seconds after it has left your lips. This delayed sound stops you mid speech, making you question what is going on. If you need the example to stir your memory think of when you have a bad connection on your cell phone and you hear the slight echo of your own voice, you invariably stop as it interrupts your train of thought. Now this is a serious invention, but mostly for the possible negative uses. Just think of the first thought that came into your mind when you read how it worked, Im sure it was somewhere along the lines of protester silencing or some big brother control campaign. Not that you’re a nut job or anything, but really how many positive uses are there? without the ability to speak ones mind, you’re barely human.

[ExtremeTech]

07 Mar This entry was written by CatastroFUCK and published on March 7, 2012 at 7:00 PM. It’s filed under Gear, WTF and tagged big brother, directional microphone, dystopian future!, free speech, I'll just sit here and silently judge you, mute, there are no sane people in japan. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.