Off Topic - Shut it. Shut your trap I said.
SteveDid you have to endure a meeting this week where someone just would not let go of a topic and kept blathering on and on endlessly?
Did you find yourself stuck on a commuter train or bus or maybe waiting on a plane when Mr. or Ms. Big Shot Important Person could not get off their mobile phones for one second, subjecting you and everyone else around them to the intimate details of their (boring) lives?
Or maybe, just maybe, that significant other in your life has been on your case about something you sort-of-but-not-really promised you'd do and have not managed to get around to it yet?
Well I just might have a solution for you - get yourself one of these cool Speech-Jamming guns, direct it towards the person you'd like to silence, and suddenly.... 
Shut it!
The details of this awesome new invention come courtesy of the MIT Technology Review's Physics Blog with this piece - How to Build a Speech-Jamming Gun.
The drone of speakers who won't stop is an inevitable experience at conferences, meetings, cinemas, and public libraries.
Today, Kazutaka Kurihara at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology in Tskuba and Koji Tsukada at Ochanomizu University, both in Japan, present a radical solution: a speech-jamming device that forces recalcitrant speakers into submission.
The idea is simple. Psychologists have known for some years that it is almost impossible to speak when your words are replayed to you with a delay of a fraction of a second.
Kurihara and Tsukada have simply built a handheld device consisting of a microphone and a speaker that does just that: it records a person's voice and replays it to them with a delay of about 0.2 seconds. The microphone and speaker are directional so the device can be aimed at a speaker from a distance, like a gun.
In tests, Kurihara and Tsukada say their speech jamming gun works well: "The system can disturb remote people's speech without any physical discomfort."
Money. Shut up that person who needs, (at least in your mind), shutting up with the added bit of awesomeness in using their own words fired back at them. I'd love to try one of these out sometime.
What do you think - did you find yourself looking around for a Speech-Jamming gun this week?
Have a Great Weekend!
Reader Comments (4)
Thinking of all the times I have had to listen to business travelers on their cell phone in airports and on the plane itself (hello - we can hear you and every corporate secret you are sharing) - I need to get myself one of these devices!
Haha - no kidding, Lynne! Thanks for the comment!
I want one for the people having conversations on their cell phones in the restrooms.
Nice - that is a very slippery slope indeed!