The researchers were looking for a way to stop “louder, stronger” voices from saying more than their fair share in conversation. The paper reads: “We have to establish and obey rules for proper turn-taking when speaking. However, some people tend to lengthen their turns or deliberately interrupt other people when it is their turn in order to establish their presence rather than achieve more fruitful discussions. Furthermore, some people tend to jeer at speakers to invalidate their speech.” In other words, this speech-jamming gun was built to enforce “proper” conversations....Admit it: You just thought of somebody you know. Oh, it's chilling all right. And yet....
At a political rally, an audience member could completely lock down Santorum, Romney, Paul, or Obama from speaking. On the flip side, a totalitarian state could point the speech jammers at the audience to shut them up. Likewise, when a celebrity or public figure appears on a live TV show, his contract could read “the audience must be silenced with speech jammers.”Once you silence the crowd, what do you want them for?
Why go out at all? Now, as you know, I actually think the President should never leave the White House. But if they're not going to take my advice, and they decide to go and do the big cult-of-personality thing, they're going to want to hear that crowd noise. But the speech jammer might be laser-focused on an individual heckler. It's a much nicer image — as long as we're aiming guns — than don't tase me, bro.
Then there’s Harrison Bergeron, one of my favorite short stories by Kurt Vonnegut.Ha. I thought of Harrison Bergeron too. (If you want to read it, it's in "Welcome to the Monkey House."
THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.Read the whole thing! Or hang out here and talk about speech jammers and other ways we might create a better, fairer world.
Some things about living still weren’t quite right, though. April, for instance, still drove people crazy by not being springtime. And it was in that clammy month that the H-G men took George and Hazel Bergeron’s fourteen-year-old son, Harrison, away.
It was tragic, all right, but George and Hazel couldn’t think about it very hard. Hazel had a perfectly average intelligence, which meant she couldn’t think about anything except in short bursts. And George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.
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Stuff like this is one of the reasons I've decided to opt out of life.
Just a minor-ish reason in the grand scheme of things, but a perfectly good one, considering all the other coming nightmares of technology and resulting loss of privacy and autonomy.
Since, as far as I can tell from the article, the device works by playing back the speaker's voice in a slight time shift, it would seem that using the device on anyone would produce annoyance in everyone in a group that was forced to hear it.
It also couldn't be used on crowds because the time shift has to be synchronized to the individual speaker for it to work. So, you'd have to have a device for every person in a crowd.
I also think that, with practice, a heavy duty protestor could learn to just keep on talking through the feedback, especially if he had a script.
I was thinking of those Lefty "contributors" on talking heads shows who, having had their say, always shout over the opposing guy when he gets his turn.
Love to see them hit with that on a regular basis.
I'd settle for one that works on my neighbors dog.
It doesn't work against grunts and guttural noises, so I'm essentially immune. Bring it on, Big Brother.
Think of the chilling effect in a classroom.
Well, I'll chime in and say that practicing the 12 Principles of a certain 12-step program in all my affairs has done me a world of good. Singleness of purpose and a group conscious against cross-talk encourages one to listen and practice patience. In this setting, we all have something to learn and something to teach.
YoungH: That's what I was thinking, that you could overcome this with practice the same way that singers can sing the national anthem despite hearing their own voice bounced back at them with a half-second delay.
Cristoph, is that a cry for help?
That weapon would be lethal if it were pointed at Sen. Chuck Schumer. The words would back up in his mind and his head would explode.
I believe there is already a gun that can stop people from talking.
It's called "a gun".
Down with speech!!
Up with twinkle fingers!!
Once you silence the crowd, what do you want them for?
Every cigar store needs a few Harvard Law Indians out front as props.
Well, it would certainly make committee meetings run more efficiently.
"Cristoph, is that a cry for help?"
Absolutely not. I well and truly reject this world, and the vast, vast majority of the people in it.
Make one that works on idiot dogs and you will have a line around the block at Wal-Mart to buy one. And I'll be in that line.
I think that in order to be chilling, it would have to be workable.
It sounds like this might be of use in a library... but asking noisy people to leave is easier, cheaper, and doesn't break. It sounds as if it might be usable at public meetings to put a kibosh on the person who won't give up the microphone or who is simply disruptive, but again... they can be asked to leave, and if they don't, they can be tazed... bro.
They could be obtained by pranksters or Occupiers and used on public speakers or pop stars at concerts, and again, the people doing so can be asked to leave, tazed, or like they did to some Occupiers at UNM whining about "we weren't trying to deny anyone her free speech, we have a right to our own free speech," they can be pushed out of the auditorium by the angry audience and given concussions.
The only thing that really matters is... do they work on pots and pans and vesuvulas?
In other words... new technology doesn't suddenly make everyone polite, nor does it empower one side of an argument to deprive the other side of free speech.
"Just know I have a whole bag of shhh with your name on it."
The right to peaceably assemble is important, no?
Not talking in libraries, and not taking more than your turn at a public microphone once you've said your bit, and allowing others to attend and peaceably assemble and get to listen to speakers they want to listen to, or talk to recruiters if they want to talk to recruiters,... none of that assurance of the right to assemble and speak, is a violation of someone else's right to assemble and speak.
A gun that garbles the voice of a speaker is not frightening (any more than a local PD flying a drone in the same areas they're allowed to drive cars and look with their eyeballs) since the function is not particularly unique. The means are unique, the function is not.
Fairness doctrines and laws restricting speech are a different matter. Speech codes that punish what is said and trite "truisms" that "offensive speech isn't free speech" are profoundly frightening.
Preventing the disruption of an event, a peaceable assembly, is not *at all* frightening, provided the disruptors are free to hold their own event.
"Stuff like this is one of the reasons I've decided to opt out of life. Just a minor-ish reason in the grand scheme of things, but a perfectly good one, considering all the other coming nightmares of technology and resulting loss of privacy and autonomy."
Please don't opt all the way out. Retreating into a very simple, low-profile life is all you need to do. It's what I would do if I were a young person today.
Once you silence the crowd, what do you want them for?
Once you silence the crowd, you leave them with very few options that do not include violence.
Back when I was in school (class of '60) an EE student rigged a tape recorder to do just this, and I experienced it. He used a hand held microphone and a headset. I was completely unable to speak past the first part of the first syllable. With a great deal of effort I could say a few words, but my speech sounded like that of a person profoundly deaf.
It's hard to imagine doing this at any distance. A shotgun microphone and a parabolic speaker with a telescope sight might work, but it would be problematic except in laboratory conditions. The target could just put his fingers in his ears to defeat it.
I don't listen to myself talk. I don't say anything until I have rehearsed it inside my head first. I can see this as being a problem for those who just think out loud and talk off the top of their heads. I may be wrong but I don't think it would stop me from completing my thoughts out loud.
It sounds like a good idea for those motor mouths who can talk without thinking.
Seriously? That's exactly the way the silence in Arthur C. Clarke's Silence Please (published in his 1957 collection, Tales from the White Hart) worked: by playing back the speaker's voice, inverted.
The whole concept seemed improbable to me, and still does. The conditions under which it would work seem extremely limited.
Old story. The article is dated in March, and I believe I heard of this thing last fall sometime. It doesn't seem to be making (or preventing) any waves.
The device is intended to enforce good conversational manners. But, as in every other context, 'good' means different things to different people. As conversations go, it's quite bad manners to allow an embarrassing silence destroy the flow. It's even worse if the embarrassing silence occurs when it's a particular person's 'moment' to carry the conversational ball. It's easy to come up with many other examples where good conversational manners requires one speaker to dominate the conversation.
An interruption of a public address is also not always a display of bad manners -- it all depends on what the person who interrupts has to say and why he's saying it just then.
Whenever you see someone trying to impose a concept of the 'good' -- it really makes no difference in what context -- you know you're dealing with someone who has no concept of manners. Education is sometimes like that -- a lousy teacher who can't explain and so just insists. Indeed, you're probably dealing with someone who should never be in a position to tell others what to do or how to live.
"this speech-jamming gun was built to enforce 'proper' conversations"
Our liberal masters know what is proper and what is improper speech.
The question is, what happens when you point one of these devices at another such device- does it create an aural "hall of mirrors" effect that continues until one or both are turned off?
Once you silence the crowd, what do you want them for?
You tell them how you will be their voice for the greater good.
You can always flip the bird to them
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