Speech-Jamming Gun Silences From 30 Meters 370
MrSeb writes "Japanese researchers have created a hand-held gun that can jam the words of speakers who are more than 30 meters (100ft) away. The gun has two purposes, according to the researchers: At its most basic, this gun could be used in libraries and other quiet spaces to stop people from speaking — but its second application is a lot more chilling. 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."
Big Brother is speaking (Score:5, Insightful)
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Remember "What if you had no lips from which to speak?"? Seems like they had those beat in The Matrix. They surely would be a tempting thing to use before elections. Mute some of the nonsense and lies. And do away with paid political ads. Raising money for those fuels corruption. Controlling fundraising has failed miserably. Cut the major avenue for spending instead. Stations should provide some free balanced public affairs programming time to inform the public. They can decide how much. The licens
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They surely would be a tempting thing to use before elections.
It would be particularly effective if you had a copy of the speech beforehand. That way, you could selectively mute words or phrases to take the speaker out of context in a way that only political advertisements can do now, but in real time!
I could seriously use one of these. I have a boss with a monstrous disability: he is incapable of shutting the f**k up.
Easy workaround (Score:5, Informative)
The speaker can simply block their ears. The gun works by sending the speaker's audio back to them with a delay.
Re:Easy workaround (Score:4, Interesting)
The speaker can simply block their ears. The gun works by sending the speaker's audio back to them with a delay.
True but for silencing people who love the sound of their own voice this may be a godsend. Imagine staggering home at 4am to find the angry wife waiting up to give you hell and you pull this beast out and silence her.
So far I have not found one on ebay yet..... I'll check again tomorrow.
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Re:Easy workaround (Score:5, Interesting)
The speaker can simply block their ears. The gun works by sending the speaker's audio back to them with a delay.
Ahhh yes... people that listen to themselves delayed tends to slow down to nothing and stop. It messes up people on call-in talk radio, and some in radio too. People in broadcasting often listen to themselves as heard on the air in headphones and there many be a significant delay when net latency and satellite links are in the loop. They learn to cope, but it isn't easy. Even phase flippers can drive a person nuts. Voice is rich in even harmonics due to a lack of symmetry in the waveform which has a spikier character in one direction. In a.m. broadcasting some audio processing gear senses the stronger peaks and on the fly inverts the signal to make the higher level modulate the a.m. carrier up to 125% modulation. The signal can't go below nothing when the audio is reducing the r.f. envelope, but there's no limit other than an arbitrary regulation in the other direction. Anyway, an announcer hears a combination of his voice directly and what comes through the headphones, and the combination is awful when the phases don't agree. It jumping back and forth is torture for them. But if they listen to unprocessed audio, they don't have as good a feel for the mix so they usually endure.
And people thought only the audience was tortured by radio...
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Try it out on yourself:
http://www.speechmonitor.org/ [speechmonitor.org]
I can still talk though...
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I hope you're kidding. Your post ("Mute some of the nonsense and lies" and subsequent replies are all exactly what we DO NOT WANT. Sure, it would be great to silence the "nonsense" coming from the opposition. And that's exactly how they feel about you. If you have the ability to silence someone else's speech because you think it's nonsensical or untrue, what on earth makes you think that only you will be able to do that, and only those whom you think should be suppressed will be suppressed?
No, I hope
see, here's the fatal flaw with this idea... (Score:5, Insightful)
If bigbro wields this against the masses, a riot's going to erupt. Might as well go straight for the teargas and flashbangs.
Re:see, here's the fatal flaw with this idea... (Score:5, Insightful)
Except this isn't about the conversation, this is about people trying to drowned out the conversation.
Screaming at someone while they are trying to talk is not a conversation.
Re:see, here's the fatal flaw with this idea... (Score:5, Insightful)
Except this isn't about the conversation, this is about people trying to drowned out the conversation.
Do you really think this technology won't be abused to silence disenting opinions in a conversation even if it is being delivered in a calm and well thought out manner? I don't buy into the "big brother" mass usage, but stuff like this is ALWAYS abused.
Hell, the RIAA will probably want to use it at concerts to prevent people from "violating their IP" by singing along...
Re:see, here's the fatal flaw with this idea... (Score:5, Funny)
Silencing guns don't silence people. People silence people.</sarcasm>
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Silencing guns don't silence people. People silence people.</sarcasm>
You're absolutely right. The gun has no reason to want to silence anyone or anything. Only people would have a motive to silence other people.
Re:see, here's the fatal flaw with this idea... (Score:5, Informative)
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Mod up informative. Once people find out how this device works and how easy it is to defeat, it will become completely useless.
Re:see, here's the fatal flaw with this idea... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:see, here's the fatal flaw with this idea... (Score:5, Insightful)
Screaming at someone while they are trying to talk is not a conversation.
But that is exactly what this device does. It literally interrupts and screams down someone who is trying to speak by repeating their own words back at them. It is just a technical implementation of what the conversation abusers were already doing.
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That's exactly what they want. They want to drown out legitimate debate. When the people involved in that debate revolt, they get to bring down the hammer on them. And then they get to smear their political enemies as lawless.
This is exactly what we saw them do with OWS last fall. But this time the muting is literal, instead of using a media blitz to drown out the real message with confused ones.
Re:see, here's the fatal flaw with this idea... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not really.
If you've ever been in a discussion where, lets see, say, part of the group was motivated by political or personal interests and ... oh lets just make something up... maybe the rest of the team was ummmm technical in nature, and just wanted to solve the problem... and didn't care if Johhny's cousin sponsors a great product that we could hack into our system vs actually chosing the correct technology...
very often when logic and actual reason fail, people resort to loud repetition... see the concept of branding (a marketing concept) if you don't believe me, its a billion dollar industry based around brainwashing people by loud repetitive messages.... with no bearing on you know... reality.
This is a tool.
The same way a SWAT team is a tool.
both can silence voices.
both have appropriate uses.
its up to us to be responsible, and if we can't then we deserve to burn.
Re:see, here's the fatal flaw with this idea... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds like every protest group I've ever seen, and their cute sloganeering.
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Yeah, and? What do you suggest to do for people to organize and get together, compared to the machineries they're facing? Do you think a slick, well-oiled and silently humming greed bot is somehow more cool, or being a pussy fucking armchair critic of people who actually try to do fuck all? Pah...
Re:see, here's the fatal flaw with this idea... (Score:4, Insightful)
"They" are bad and must be stopped. We can blame all the world's problems on "them." Gosh, if we could only figure out who "they" and "them" are we could solve all of the world's problems.
Sounds too much like a child wailing about his all-powerful parents.
Re:see, here's the fatal flaw with this idea... (Score:5, Insightful)
I have no doubt that non-racists can dislike Obama, and I reckon the majority of Tea Party members are not racist.
Now, how about some evidence for your claims that:
(1) Some or many of the racist signs at Tea Party events were the product of liberals trying to discredit the movement and
(2) The media has removed black people from images of Tea Party rallies.
Just 'cause, you know, anyone can say anything.
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If bigbro wields this against the masses, a riot's going to erupt.
But it will be a silent riot. Now they only need to find a way to selectively block sight and, to all practical purposes, the riot will stop existing.
Re:see, here's the fatal flaw with this idea... (Score:5, Insightful)
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
- John F. Kennedy, 1962
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In other news had it come from the US I'd say it violates my freedom of speech. Insert rim shot.
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I disagree. Yelling and interrupting others has no place in a democracy where decisions are made by rational, respectful debate and letting all voices be heard. Guests with dissenting opinions on the Bill O'Reilly show could sure use one of these devices.
Re:Big Brother is speaking (Score:5, Interesting)
This strikes me as an almost perfectly cliched Japanese technical solution to a social problem: you cannot accept the loss of face that would be involved in telling your minion Mr Akusake to shut up indicating that you do not have the degree of control over Mr Akusake that your relative positions would indicate, or the unspeakable loss of status that would be implied if you told your minion Mr Akusake to shut up and he didn't, but you can point the shutting-up machine at him and cause him to shut up.
Loud people dominating conversations is undeniably an actual social problem, and this is an actual technical solution to it.
Re:Big Brother is speaking (Score:5, Funny)
"Silence, peon"?! Dude, think of the children! I mean seriously, think of the awesome power of this tool when used on children. Screaming in the back seat? Being asked a third time for candy before dinner? Grocery store tantrums that everyone notices? Not anymore!
This is probably the best parenting tool to come along since the willow reed or the TV!
On another note - this thing looks like it could be bypassed with the simple expedient of plugging your ears while speaking. If you wanted to get all technical with countermeasures, it'd be interesting to see what constructive interference does to mute the loud inconvenient person
introverted scientists.... (Score:2)
"to stop 'loader, stronger' voices from saying more than there fair share in conversation" ....says the introverted scientist
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Let me say this about it ... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Let me say this about it ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Having read how it works, I can tell you that being focused is enough to overcome this. It doesn't drown you out; it doesn't mute you. What it does is return your words to you about 200ms later so that you are dealing with a terribly strong reverse echo. This has a psychological effect on the speaker.
By focusing, you can overcome it. I know this for a fact, because, as an A/V tech and DJ, I have spoken into a PA system that had a compressor on it, which compressor introduced about the same amount of delay. Even as I watched other people struggle with it when it was their turn to speak, I had no problems taking the mic and speaking, as long as I focused on what I was saying and ignored the feedback. (For the record, I used that compressor exactly once. It wasn't intended for PA use, but for broadcast, where the latency wouldn't have mattered.)
If you can keep yourself focused on what it is you have to say, you can overcome this quite easily.
Obvious use (Score:2)
Schools will want them.
Even more obvious use (Score:2)
Want to disrupt some boring political speech?
Umm (Score:4, Interesting)
So, here's the technical implementation:
The gun works by listening in with a directional microphone, and then, after a short delay of around 0.2 seconds, playing it back with a directional speaker. This triggers an effect that psychologists call Delayed Auditory Feedback (DAF), which has long been known to interrupt your speech (you might’ve experienced the same effect if you’ve ever heard your own voice echoing through Skype or another voice comms program). According to the researchers, DAF doesn’t cause physical discomfort, but the fact that you’re unable to talk is obviously quite stressful.
What's to prevent someone from simply speaking louder to talk over the "jammer"? Why wouldn't this be the target's first reaction? Wouldn't a delay of 0.2 seconds sound just like an echo?
There's also the fact that this is highly targeted (no shutting up entire audiences) and doesn't actually create "silence", just cacophony.
Re:Umm (Score:5, Interesting)
Having worked with different types of audio equipment my entire life I can assure you that this effect is real.
However, depending on the delay it might not "shut you up" completely. It can make you slur or not be able to form words. You can get stuck on a single syllable because your brain says you haven't finished it.
So, no, it doesn't sound just like simple feedback or echo.
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I would love to try this, just to experience it. I wonder if it is more effective than simply broadcasting a reverse wave-form of the person's speech (like noise cancellation head-phones)?
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Re:Umm (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Umm (Score:5, Interesting)
Interesting. I worked phone support for a company, and their systems would occasionally do this. The delay was anywhere from a fraction of a second to a couple seconds, randomly for each call it happened to. It is really, really annoying, but I always assumed it made me stop talking because I was trying to be polite to the customer and when I hear a voice from their end, I'd stop and listen.
It took me about a week to learn to just keep talking when I heard my own voice, and not someone else's.
Getting used to it (Score:5, Informative)
Same phenomenon :
- for people used to do VoIP over shitty connection with a correspondant lacking echo cancellation (where you get a smiliar delayed echo). The first few days, you might be distrubed by the delayed echo. Afterward you just start ignoring it.
- for people who've learned not to rely on auditory feedback when speaking (like simultaneous speech translators: they use sound blocking earphones to hear to source material, and speak the translation into a sound-proof recording mask, to avoid creating noise interference to other translator in neighbooring booths. Thus they are used to speak without any auditory feedback).
- for deaf or hard-hearing persons who've lost the auditory feedback since long time ago.
They too will be unaffected by this device, just like you probably aren't due to your training with shitty phone links.
The only way to effectively silence a conversation would be using destructive interferrences (playing the conversation back in-sync but with opposite phase, to cancel out the noise).
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The effect can throw someone and confuse them. Most people are already nervous enough about public speaking, I can see how this would shut up disruptive people (or silence honest opinions) in a televised debate. It's not too dissimilar to tricks sound engineers can use to screw up live performances. either putting a delay on the feedback monitors or silencing them altogether is a way to really make even a very talented signer into a laughing stock. This is a cheap technique very readily used to humiliate ov
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Won't work on Germans (Score:2)
You need to take an extra second before you speak (to plan out or memorize your sentence), but then you just say the whole thing instead of relying on audible feedback.
So Germans are naturally imune to this disruption :-D
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Japan has had disruptive (think far worse than the US Tea Party) since the 1950s. Usually they are ultra-nationalist and far right parties. When they are mild they are just yelling and screaming at street corners and town meetings. When they are their worst they have vans with loud speakers where they drive around spewing their vitriol and generally annoying everyone around. I'm sure this device (albeit misguided) is the answer to that.
Is this new? (Score:5, Funny)
Conventional firearms have been effective at silencing speakers for centuries. Do we really need this?
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Yes. In places outside of Texas this is not yet accepted as a method of ending a casual conversation.
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Well, in all fairness, that thing is much to big to fit in my holster.
Not really a speech jammer (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Not really a speech jammer (Score:5, Informative)
According TFA all the "jammer" does is play back a copy of your speech delayed by 0.2 seconds, akin to being annoyed by loud echo on a VoIP phone or Skype conversation. While echo can sometimes be annoying when it interrupts yourself, it is fairly easy to adjust if you've done it before and talk over yourself. Because the gun features both a directional microphone and directional speaker, if you can comfortably talk over yourself everyone else will hear you just fine, sans echo.
Looking up Delayed Auditory Feedback, it's been long used to help stutterers to produce fluent speech. It causes them to speak slower, but they also speak more fluently.
I'm with you, this does not actually stop speaking, it just makes it annoying and stressful to speak, but a lot of people won't suffer any impairment in dominating a conversation even with this device.
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As long as you block out the echo (mentally or physically), you can easily talk.
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Wear ear plugs and you will defeat this tech.
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Too much hassle. I'll just turn down / off my cochlear implant. Then I'll be as annoying as ever!
Three hurras for the STFUgun! (Score:5, Funny)
Hip! hip! H....
Wow... (Score:2)
Damn, somehow my ex-wife has become a Japanese researcher?
Keep it on all the time (Score:2)
Not as cool as hyped... (Score:5, Informative)
I was disappointed to see that it doesn't create some kind of actual interference, but rather just gives them a local echo of themselves and creates a psychological effect. This can easily be overcome with practice. If you've ever announced in a gym or a stadium, you get the same effect and get used to it quickly.
The Oscars will be the first customer (Score:3)
No more get-the-hint loud music, desperate host or shepherds crook. Instead the blubbering ham - sorry , I mean award winning thespian - suddenly goes silent and just looks like a fish gasping for air. In fact , the ceremony could probably be improved vastly if it was switched on 99% of the time.
Easy work-around (Score:2)
Finally a device for Husbands of the world (Score:2)
Finally a device for Husbands of the world.
The non-talkative will inherit the world. Blabbermouths of the living room when Liverpool FC be gone.
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Should say when "Liverpool FC are playing" be gone.
Harper is gonna love these (Score:2)
I betcha Harper is going to order a dozen of these for the Canadian Parliament next week!
Watch for a "bulk order" from the US Congress and Senate by month end, too.
So it's basically a mute button for people? (Score:5, Funny)
There's a Nobel prize waiting for the person who invents a way to use this over the Internet. Possibly the Nobel Peace Prize itself.
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Mute button to stop speech on the interent?
That's called the FBI.
This couild be a HUGE seller for parents! (Score:3)
"Are we there yet?" "Are we ......
(That's better!)
Beneficial Uses (Score:2)
Delayed Auditory Feedback (Score:2)
Delayed Auditory Feedback (DAF), is a device that enables a user of the device to speak into a microphone and then hear his or her voice in headphones a fraction of a second later. [...]
DAF usage (with a 175 millisecond delay) has been proven to induce mental stress.
-- Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]
Don't speech Jam me Bro... (Score:2)
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Yes.
You stand firmly with back straight, legs shoulder width apart. Breath in deep, fill your lungs- then exhale whilst really loudly yelling:
"IN SIGN LANGUAGE"
That's how you scream "in sign language".
The Obligatory XKCD (Score:5, Funny)
http://xkcd.com/368/ [xkcd.com]
Academy Awards (Score:2)
yea but (Score:2)
FTA: "At a political rally, an audience member could completely lock down Santorum, Romney, Paul, or Obama from speaking. "
well, I'm sure the secret service would notice if you were pointing toaster at POTUS (look at the pic, handheld, yes? inconspicuous? no)
wonder if you could defeat it with a piece of glass like a bigger teleprompter screen (it doesn't use noise cancelling technology) - no mention of how it works in an amplified environment where sound comes real time from multiple directions/sources.
"The
Likelihood this will be used legitimately (Score:3)
This would be a fantastic tool to help enforce respectful dialog during discussions/debates.
However, the likelihood that this will be limited to just that, is so low as to require an entirely new not-yet-invented field of mathematics just to calculate the odds.
Anyone who uses this technology... (Score:2)
...isn't worthy of respect or being listened to in the first place.
If I'm ever at a political rally where one of these is used that candidate will never get my vote.
Won't work with politicians (Score:5, Funny)
Jam my speech? (Score:2)
Someone in Japan has guns. They'll use that to speak instead.
Typical Japanese.
Military Uses Anyone? (Score:2)
I'm just imagining this thing in a special ops context. How useful would it be to be able to remotely confused the ability of a group of guards to speak to each other without losing focus on the battle at hand?
Easy to beat (Score:3)
"The gun works by listening in with a directional microphone, and then, after a short delay of around 0.2 seconds, playing it back with a directional speaker."
Basically, this messes with your brain, causing you to stop talking. Two very simple techiques for stopping this
1. Put a finger in each ear or cover them with your hands
2. Train yourself to block out the echo. I understand those in the radio industry already do this.
Interesting little research, but not practical.
Wear ear senmuffs (Score:2)
anti-jamming device (Score:2)
So it's a heckler gun. (Score:2)
Hecklers will find it useful.
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Puffft (Score:2)
We have had these in Texas for years, we call them Glock's
Countermeasure (Score:2)
So the countermeasure/defense against this device is one that records what you're saying and then sends it out after a 5 second (or longer) delay, essentially pre-recording what you want to say by a short time. They already use this device at airport gates when they want to make an announcement.
Just think of the benefits (Score:2)
CONTROL (Score:2)
No cone of silence references? Man, I'm old. :-(
One last improvement (Score:3)
Japanese conversation style (Score:5, Interesting)
I remember reading an article a few years ago called "Conversational Ballgames" by an english-speaking woman who became fluent in Japanese while in residence there. She describes her difficulty fitting in to conversation patterns even after she was "fluent" until she learned that social expectations of the conversation differed across cultures. She compares western-style conversation to volleyball or tennis, a match where you bat back and forth the same ball with a partner -- whereas Japanese conversation reflects more a game of bowling. She explains the game:
"A Japanese-style conversation, however, is not at all like tennis or volleyball, it’s like bowling. You wait for your turn, and you always know your place in line. It depends on such things as whether you are older or younger, a close friend or a relative stranger to the previous speaker, in a senior or junior position, and so on.
The first thing is to wait for your turn, patiently and politely. When your moment comes, you step up to the starting line with your bowling ball, and carefully bowl it. Everyone else stands back, making sounds of polite encouragement. Everyone waits until your ball has reached the end of the lane, and watches to see if it knocks down all the pins, or only some of them, or none of them. Then there is a pause, while everyone registers your score.
Then, after everyone is sure that you are done, the next person in line steps up to the same startling line, with a different ball. He doesn’t return your ball. There is no back and forth at all. And there is always a suitable pause between turns. There is no rush, no impatience."
Here's a link to the essay: http://books.google.com/books?id=EhAYIyaeuz8C&pg=PA454&lpg=PA454#v=onepage&q&f=false
The reasoning given by the researchers for the need to silence someone (while still chilling) comes into context for me when I think of them trying to harmonize a game of bowling. I can see them pointing their silence gun at rowdy american-like bowlers butting into the lane when it isn't their turn, distracting the bowler on deck, and scooping the ball off the lane before it reaches the pins!
Oh I get it... (Score:2)
STFU or I'll shoot you....
Delayed feedback won't work (Score:2)
Hearing your own voice with a slight delay won't confuse people any more. Bad cell phone interconnects and VoIP with failed echo suppressors produce that effect all the time. Today it just makes people talk louder.
(Sometimes I think ISDN did telephony right. Rigid timing, no compression, full duplex, digital end to end. ISDN voice never caught on in the US, but it's widely deployed in parts of Europe.)
Physics is a 2-way Street (Score:2)
Are the principles behind this only known to the incredibly advanced race of Aliens from Planet Xorg? No. Are the components of this device only available to government agencies with their massive budgets? No. Are the physics behind its function an alchemical secret, wrapped in allusion and allegory, plain to only a select few Initiates? No.
Like the LRAD cannon, drones, tasers, and other means governments have recently employed to silence opposition to their policies, there is nearly equal access to th
Just in time! (Score:3)
Excellent! Just in time for election-year debates.
Moderator: No, Senator, your time really is over.
Senator: Marg garbele gabble gabbblarp!
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That's why we have a right to arms people... so we can still speak ASL when our voices are muted by Japanese Speech stopping guns. The founding father's thought of everything.
Re:Dolores Umbridge (Score:4, Funny)
If it's important enough to say, it's important enough to carve into the back of your hand.
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THIS IS GENIUS. Although I actually happen to enjoy chatting it up with my mother in law oddly enough...
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