Two Japanese researchers recently introduced a prototype for a device they call a SpeechJammer that can literally “jam” someone’s voice — effectively stopping them from talking. Now they’ve released a video of the device in action.
“We have to establish and obey rules for proper turn-taking,” write Kazutaka Kurihara and Koji Tsukada in their article on the SpeechJammer (PDF). “However, some people tend to lengthen their turns or deliberately disrupt other people when it is their turn … rather than achieve more fruitful discussions.”
The researchers released the video after their paper went viral Thursday, to the authors’ apparent surprise. “Do you know why our project is suddenly becoming hot now?” asked Kurihara in an e-mail exchange with Wired.com.
The design of the device is deceptively simple. It consists of a direction-sensitive microphone and a direction-sensitive speaker, a motherboard, a distance sensor and some relatively straightforward code. The concept is simple, too — it operates on the well-studied principle of delayed auditory feedback. By playing someone’s voice back to them, at a slight delay (around 200 milliseconds), you can jam a person’s speech. - Wired
3 Comments
TheGenksays...Oh the fun we will have at political rallies.
citosays...yea there was a post on ats forums (of course) with links to new york times where this is already being tested against protesters and to stop charismatic group leaders from rallying a riot or to stop someone being interviewed on television from finishing their sentence censoring them without having to edit.
this is really bad shit.
siftbotsays...Moving this video to longde's personal queue. It failed to receive enough votes to get sifted up to the front page within 2 days.
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