Projecting Sound 'Inside Your Head'

Gregus writes "Projecting 'hypersonic sound' has appeared here before, but NY Times Magazine (FRRYYY) has an in-depth article with its lauded inventor and its applications. John Anderton, you could use a Guinness right now." Plus this story includes screwing with Mall Walkers!

Subliminal messaging taken to new heights?

[razormage]

While research has proven that subliminal messages are, from a marketing standpoint, mostly ineffective, one has to wonder about the advertising possibilities of this type of technology.
Sure, there are the obvious "private advertising" applications mentioned in the article, but this kind of thing can be very interesting - and very frightening.
Picture - you're driving along a road during rush hour. Suddenly, your skull registers the squeal of tires and a massive crash. Or, walking down a sidewalk, a quiet voice inside your head whispers that you're all going to die.
Like any new technology, this one sounds fun, but is going to require some degree of regulations and control to avoid abuse.

Scary applications

[sib888]

This has the potential to be the worst invention ever. How would you feel about being forced to listen to advertisements while riding the subway? You can't turn it off. 20 minutes of commercials, or event (shudder) popular music.

Sounds...annoying

[canajin56]

"Imagine, he says, walking by a soda machine (say, one of the five million in Japan that will soon employ HSS), triggering a proximity detector, then hearing what you alone hear -- the plink of ice cubes and the invocation, ''Wouldn't a Coke taste great right about now?'' Or riding in the family car, as the kids blast Eminem in the back seat while you and the wife play Tony Bennett up front. Or living in a city where ambulance sirens don't wake the entire neighborhood at 4 a.m. Or hearing different and extremely targeted messages in every single aisle of a grocery store -- for instance, near the fresh produce, ''Hey, it's the heart of kiwi season!''"

The bit about different people in the car only hearing their own music is cool. The annoying pop machines and, even worse, PRODUCE ISLES, are just awful. I mean, I can look away from an obnoxious billboard etc, but there is no way to stop this! Not even plugging your ears, since it is IN your head!

Also, using it for emergency sirens? One of the biggest problems with CURRENT emergency sirens is that it is VERY difficult for the human ear to tell which direction it is coming from, because of the specific frequencies used. If it projects the sound INTO your head, there will be no way in HELL to know where it is coming from.

Another problem with using it for sirens is that it is important to hear the siren well before the emergency vehicle reaches you. This system appears to be LOS, so how well will that work? It would only work if the ultrasonic sounds can penetrate through surrounding houses and so on, which would be FAR worse than current sirens, as the walls of your house wouldn't dampen it! And if it CAN'T penetrate through your walls, then I don't see how CARS wouldn't block it, too; It is VERY important that people inside of cars be able to hear the siren!

Re:Subliminal messaging taken to new heights?

[Dyolf Knip]

you're driving along a road during rush hour. Suddenly, your skull registers the squeal of tires and a massive crash.

Utterly soundproof cars become all the rage; convertibles become well and truly dead.

Hmmm, I wonder if this widget could be combined with anti-noise generators? On the face of it, it seems like a uniform anti-noise sphere would work much better than a point source speaker.

I'm sceptical about some of the uses mentioned...

[MyNameIsFred]

I think there are certainly some uses for this technology. One of the best examples was a museum. When you stand in front of a painting, you and you alone hear a description of it. For others, I'm sceptical. For example, most of the soda machines I see are tucked away. Generally, if I'm close enough to see the machine, its because I want to buy a soda. It seems a little senseless to advertise to someone who is in the process of buying it. Other examples he mentions, such as kids in the back seat of a car are easily handled with current technology -- headphones. I don't see any added benefit.

Dangerous

[terradyn]

They explain the concept on how to disable the enemy with this technology. Take the reverse baby crying sound and crank up the output signal for the speaker. What's to stop someone from buying the speakers in the future and doing the exact same thing to civilians/police? I'd hate to see this type of technology in the hands of terrorists. Imagine sonic bombs taking out city blocks (given that the inventor says 1% output could nauseate the author for hours, what do you think 100% output would do)?

Re:I saw this on CNN a while back

[Blaine Hilton]

It seems like all great inventers have started as being considered a "crack pot" Now I wonder how this will be used. It seems like something that is too powerful to exist. Kinda like the cartoons where they use a device to control every one in the world. If this is connected to a set of satalites and beamed down very loud music or just a shrill note, somebody could become very powerful, very fast.

They can do that already with loudspeakers

[MyNameIsFred]

This technology doesn't suddenly make it possible for them to force you to listen to things on a subway. They could do that already with loudspeakers. The fact that they don't, and that so many mass transit systems ban radio et al unless you use headphones, suggests that this invention won't change this.

Advertising use is abuse?

[bobsledbob]

I've read a couple of posts that suggest the reader would likely hunt out and smash the offending advertising emitter using this technology. I'd suggest that you'd even have the legal right to do so!

This technology creates the offending sound 'in your head'. Litteraly, the sound is created by the resonating waves heading your eardrum or bones in your ear. This is as close to abuse as you can get, imho. You can't turn away or tune it out.

It's one thing for an ad to sit there waiting to be looked at, or a background noise which are human brains are accustomed to tuning out. It's yet an entirely different thing to have sound resonating in your head which you cannot stop nor have really much sense of the emminating source.

Just think of the problems caused by billboards on the freeway... 'Um, excuse me, while your driving by at 60 mph, would you consider a nice refreshing .'

Re:Subliminal messaging taken to new heights?

[error0x100]

A soundproof car? No thanks. I'd kinda like to hear the sound of real screeching tires if there is an impending accident, or the horn of a runaway truck coming up behind me, or the sirens of an ambulance etc.

Stop The Noise!

[Anonymous Coward]

It isn't enough that we have the raging cattle noise of endless traffic, engines roaring, tires squealing, horns honking, drivers' groaning, the people who can't seem to sit still and have to babble all the time, especially into their cellphones, the buzz of planes overhead, and all the other noises that drown out the relaxing sounds of nature and valuable silence, visual noise bombardments in the form of billboards, TV advertisements, and other such idiocy, but now we're going a step further and attacking our minds seemingly directly with yet more noise?

The Amish and Catholic monastic life suddenly seems a lot more attractive.

I opt out of the noise pollution.

Well said

[chazmote]

Unbelievable that "personal countermeasures" are going to be required just to walk down the street!

Re:This will likely become...

[Saeger]

''nonlethal weapon,'' the Pentagon now prefers to stress the friendlier-sounding ''hailing intruders'' function.

I fucking hate nicey-nice euphemisms! But just as "Carnivore" is still called Carnivore, rather than their new unemotional term, I expect people will still keep the "nonlethal weapon" meme despite what the pentagon would like.

Long live George Carlin.

--

I want one of these in my car

[Lord Sauron]

So I can send messages like:

- Hey dude, your tire's flat
- Go home, or learn where the accelerator pedal is
- You moron, speed up
- Do you know how I can get to Chestnut St. ?
- Yo mamma's fat

and direct it to a car.

Political Uses- Angry Voices in The Head

[Alien54]

Yea, great, mucic for the voices i my head to sing along with. Quite badly I might add.

The NYTimes article describes the protoype used as being very portable.

flash forward.

Can you imagine a protester using this to tell a politician what they think about the politician? or dozens of protesters.

Or aimed at Bill Gates at Comdex. or any other celebrity.

more subtly done, just a quiet voice wispering in the ear "you're evil" or something. Even with glass in between, the glass should resonate nicely.[?]

This will turn being a celeb into a living hell.

I can envision the havok teenage boys with these things could do.

Re:The first time this happens to me

[peter]

Think about it. If advertizers thought it was a good idea to broadcast adds from pop machines, they could do it with normal loudspeakers. They're smart enough to know how much that would piss people off, and lead to the machine getting unplugged, so they don't do it. There are laws against noise pollution, and so on. It might catch on in stores like the article suggested, though, and I don't like that prospect. I already detest shopping, and HSS would certainly make me dislike it even more. It would be a lot harder to smash the emitter in a store than in a soda machine.

You're right (in your reply to your own message) about the scary prospects of this in the hands of unscrupulous individuals in positions of power, such as the CIA.