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The Mind of an Inventor
kipb writes to tell us that Newsweek has an interesting article about Danny Hillis and the company he co-founded called Applied Minds. One of the featured devices that Hillis talks about is a device designed to increase the amount of privacy one has working in the average corporate cubicle. "Babble" is about the size of a paperback book and plugs into the phone with two external speakers that you place on the top of your cube. While holding a normal conversation on the phone Babble plays back random meaningless snipits of your own voice which makes your conversation practically unintelligible to people as close as 4 feet away.
$ whatis themeaningoflife
themeaningoflife: not found
It would also make calls unintelligible within 4 feet.
Meanwhile Johnson in the next cube has been interpreting the voices as instructions to bring an AK-47 to work and begin the Day of Reckoning.
So the two morons I am forced to sit next to at work who never get off the phone can broadcast MORE OF THEIR VOICE TO ME.
I'd break down crying if I weren't already burnt out inside.
How is this a good invention?
She's built like a steak house, but she handles like a bistro....
Oh great. Gimme 40 of those in an office & see how long before someone snaps...
the voices! the voices!..!
Wow, is this a privacy application or a tool to help me hear my own voice?
If I plug this into my computer will it make my music downloads unintelligable to them? Terrific! This will also bring technobabble to a new high (low).
It would be really bad to start hearing yourself LCD Display with your spewing random comments out whilst your trying to speak.
It could mean the difference Also, in 2020, everyone on between winning a contract or losing a customer.
I really couldn't put up with it for long sci-fi show that was from the creator of Buffy before I smashed it up.
liqbase
Why Is this Useful. Where at work, its noisy enough as it Is, why add more to it. Plus when did Privicay become an Issue at the job. I can see this to twart coorproate espinoge but really. I have headaches enough at work listening to stupid people I dont need any more of It
This guy seems like more of a Mad Scientist than an inventor to me.
What if the "meaningless snipits" just happen to have the words "fire", "bankruptcy", "layoffs", "harassment", "pregnant" or "terror" in them?
Tired of being "punished" by the Slashdot $rtbl since 2002. I'm now over at http://soylentnews.org/ .
I wonder how much user testing they have tried with this product. It sounds like the helpful MS Office paperclip, or automatic spell checking as you go along - great ideas in theory but intrinsically flawed in practice.
Privacy or not, I cannot think of anything more irritating, to myself, colleagues and the person I'm talking to on the phone, than meaningless drivel coming out of my speakers in my voice.
I can hear it now:
Me: Can you confirm that order please?
Stationers: Two printer cartridges, twelve reams of paper, and one partridge in a pear tree.
Ever try to talk to someone who has their cellphone speaker turned up too loud, causing you to hear your own voice every now and then? It makes it really hard to get a decent stream of words out.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
--Pat
...reading the linked article? It is full of descriptions of amazing things, and indeed does say that Hillis is quite childlike - his inventions are almost toys, very expensive and shiny toys. It's not just Babble.
--;
Danny Hillis was once a big name in artificial intelligence.
His Connection Machine was an awesome, state-of-the art supercomputer.
Stumbling upon artificial intelligence was supposed to happen Real Soon Now with Danny's thinking machines.
Thinking Machines was the name Danny gave to his ambitious enterprise.
True Artificial Intelligence proved far too hard for Danny Hillis and now he has gone on to less difficult challenges.
Slashdot readers expect more from the Mind of an Inventor.
Instead of contributing to the overall noise level, why not research an effective noise cancellation solution? I realize that they're not completely effective, but they ought to be able to muffle the noise somewhat to the point that your noise blends in with the background noise of a thousands mouse clicks and Windows ding sounds.
I can do this already after a fifth of gin
=)
In Kissinger's memoirs, White House Years, he describes how he and others, probably Nixon included, while in Moscow for a summit meeting, brought along a device I believe he called "the babbler", which was a tape player that played the sounds of many people speaking or maybe splices of babble. Then they could converse in their presumably bugged living quarters while playing the babbler. Kissinger wrote that it became intolerable after a while, it was so distracting.
most of my conversations with people might as well be in jibberish..
The Russians had so may bugging devices in the US embassy they could have used the difference in mike locations to filter by position of sound source.
Been using ViaVoice on /. for ages..
No - increase headaches.
I thought it was going to be a cone of silence like device, where it could cut down on outside distractions - maybe some white noise generation. A cone of silence type device.
Nope, it's a damned chatterbox. I can't imagine anyone who would want to hear random snippets of themselves while talking on the phone, talk about totally breaking your train of thought.
If you need privacy while speaking in your cubicle, you can just as easily leave your cubicle and use either a cellphone or another phone to have that privacy. If you're really talking about company secrets at work and your coworkers *shouldn't* be overhearing, go petition to your boss to get a real office, because you shouldn't have to be the one to find some crazy solution to what should be a nonissue. If it's personal, then pop out to break and actually deal with it, instead of muffled tones that waste more time than you need to spend, and distract everyone else around you whether they want to listen in or not.
cyn, free software and *nix operating systems enthusiast.
I'd have to see how it works in real-life to really judge, but I'm not sure how well it'd really work.
I know every time I hear myself with a delay while I talk (a friend's cell phone has time-delay feedback, bad speaker/mic config on teamspeak), I have a hard time talking. Hearing my own voice while I try to talk is ~confusing~, and results in me having to concentrate to say what I need to say.
~D
This sig has been enciphered with a one-time pad. It could say almost anything.
In the Bin cave or 6 star resort. Meeting the CIA or just chatting about the next "marriage" or "game". The perfect gift for any man on a mission.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Of course, planting one of these in The Oval Office would produce perfectly intelligable speechy for someone standing outside. We live in hope.
When the posters fear their moderators, there is tyranny; when the moderators fears the posters, there is liberty.
Does anyone else think it'd be fun to hide this in the conference room hooked up to the speakerphone?
I'd like something that converts the unintelligible babble of my coworkers into something coherent. Productivity would skyrocket!
The article says:
"As promised, when the speakers play a scrambled version of your voice, your real conversation can't be understood by someone standing even four feet away. (In tests by NEWSWEEK, no one wanted to stand four feet away, because the chatter from those boxes was anything but soothing.)"
What the article doesn't say is how the chatter from those boxes affects the person talking on the phone. I'm prepared to believe that it doesn't irritate the user him-or-herself, but I'm from Missouri, you've got to show me.
Or at least show me some convincing testimony from Newsweek reporters!
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Security; Badges are required at all times and without the warm Semi-privacy of a Cubicle and the wise but stern support of a middle manager, geeks cannot invent anything worthwhile.
Company Cafeteria food; while bland is meets your nutritional needs, It's a single cell protein combined with synthetic aminos, vitamins, and minerals. Everything the body needs. Do you know what it really reminds me of? Tasty Wheat. Did you ever eat Tasty Wheat?
Mandated clothng choices; Pressed white shirt and simple black tie. Simple Jackets needed, your rank does requires them.
On Time Policy [OTP]; This company is one of the top software companies in the world because every single employee understands that they are part of a whole. Thus if an employee has a problem, the company has a problem.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
One day, I was talking to a friend on the phone and said the F-word. Later that day I was talking to my mother and said the word "Nuns".
During a private conversation, the speakers above my cubicle spouted out "F**K NUNS"...
My privacy has never been more complete!
:shrugs:
:grins: One of the few advantages of being deaf, that and not hearing some of what you don't want to.
Useless to me since I'm deaf and use a TTY anyway. A TTY is a text based telecommunications device that works over a phone line. You can buy software TTY's though they aren't as good as the hardware.
Kind of hard to overhear a TTY since it isn't verbal.
...That's a real nice website they've got there. Yes sir, real nice.
Finally! A way to do away with Rosie O'Donnel and Barbara Streisand! Send 'em some of these, free.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
A machine that does the exact opposite would be much more useful: Translate the meaningless babble that is produced by some people (mostly managers) into coherent, meaningful talk.
Cubes are mostly echo proof as it is. There's no need for an eletronic device to mask the contents of your personal calls.
Instead, why not raise the height of the standard 5'6" cube walls with 7 or 8 foot. Then put a roof and door on it. Voila - problem solved.
I suspect the reason we don't do this is because a 7x7x7 cubicle would be a bit too much like a cocoon. As a cubicle dweller I'd say you don't have to provide me with anything but overhead bins. Then I'll sling my hamock in and enjoy my day.
This is going to revolutionize politics!
Increasing the noise level in the average office workspace will only decrease the productivity. For details, see Peopleware by DeMarco & Lister ISBN 0-932633-43-9.
Here's an even better idea, office with a door!
... that this company wants inventors who are willing to relocate. If nothing else, innovation requires comfort. It's too bad such a company can't be innovative about telecommuting. ;-)
In addition to describing interesting "Babble" devices the linked article from the posting talks about another interesting device that allows the user to change satellite views on a table-top by putting your hands on the table and spreading them, you zoom into a region, a city, a neighborhood. You can also slide your hand over the table to expose the view as captured at an earlier time. Even more interesting is that the surface of the table rises to create a model of the actual terrain.
As a sophomore in Computer Science everything was very abstract and really not as interesting as I had hoped. After reading Hillis' book The Pattern on the Stone my interest was renewed. The book presents Computer Science ideas in a more physical manner and I found my interest renewed (even if I still had to deal with professors that had died inside theirselves but continued teaching). The best comparison I can make is to Feynman's "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!": Adventures of a Curious Character.
http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/307824.307853
ACM Sigplan Notices 33(12):25-31 Mind.Forth: Thoughts on AI and Forth
http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1052883.1052885
ACM Sigplan Notices 39(12):11-16 Forth and AI Revisited: BRAIN.FORTH
http://www.sl4.org/archive/0205/3829.html
http://pub.ufasta.edu.ar/ohcop/curso2003/27-Activi dad12.ppt
http://books.iuniverse.com/viewgiftoc.asp?isbn=059 5654371&page=1
Dear
I don't need one of those contraptions. My conversations are naturally convoluted.
Regardz,
George W. Bush, President Of The United Gulags Of America
Watch *shit* those words that *asshole* you record onto that *Microsoft* machine.
Yesterday's fire in the break room led to the bankruptcy of the coffee till. Any more harassment of the group's admin assistant will surely lead to layoffs...a situation pregnant with terror.
Propagating the Theory of Mind is the prime objective.
Coding the Artificial Mind serves the prime objective above.
Spreading AI Memes on the Net, useless as it may seem to your eminent self, O Lord of the Flameflies, serves such purposes as attracting other AI coders to the True AI enterprise and shoring up the personal motivation-structure for a lifelong AI project.
So back off and give a sincere independent investigator an even chance. It's easy for you to say, "submit a peer reviewed paper" -- but which comes first, the chicken (lots of peer-reviewed papers on Mentifex AI); or the egg (Mentifex kick-starting the thaw of the AI Winter right here on Slashdot)?
So the troll label sucks.
I'm curious - how do these boxes decide to become active? Do they require to be activated manually or do they detect human speech automatically? If so, it would be be fun to fill a room full of these devices and just let them run wild.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Thanks to the increase in the amount of H1B and L-1 Visa workers, most of the sound comming from your co-workers cube is all babble anyway.....so for most high tech workers, this device is useless.
Just hook it up while someone is gone or not paying attention and disguise it in a plant or something like that. Imagine their surprise when the plan starts "Babbling" back to them. LOL! I work in a rather stuffy office, this is just what someone would need to liven things up a bit!
Generation Trance: What generation are you?
It is amazing that businesses cannot figure out that cubicles are a complete and utter failure. Whats worse is that companies then decide to put employees who do not have the mental capability to think if there is any noise in the room in this environment. This leads to the mentally deficent to consistantly complain because the guy in the cube next to them is having a conversation.
Walls, solve this problem. Those with problems thinking can have their quite, and those that do not can have their noise. Everyone is more productive.
This could also help in finding and diagnosing early schyzophrenia in people! or making them believe they are!
Add a voice modulator and a reverse voice setup and you may make them believe they are possessed.
Automated voices talking to us on phones, buses, trains, other public places and spaces. Now this.
Time to shave my head bald and start wearing all white.
For starters, the speakers should send out a audio cancellation on the user's voice, and put the "babble" out in a low, quiet volume level. "Babble" parts should probably be soft sounds, so that to an obvserver, it sounds like a low murmur of activity.
The feedback of voice from a cube is nice, because it alerts others not to disturb a phone conversation. Keeping it low, combined with the audio cancellation, should provide ample protection against eavesdroppers, without disturbing the surrounding cubicles.
If the effect is done right, an overt attempt to listen should be met with a profound confusion and maybe even be a little disturbing to the listener trying to understand it. To anyone else int he office, it should just be a little more background noise (Less distracting because of the chosen tones and the fact that the human brain should not pick up the conversation due to unrecognizable "words").
It would be interesting to listen to a recording of the tests.
I once had a background program that did something like that... except that at random intervals, it would take over the keyboard and type messages. ^_^ Took my co-worker a while to figure out what was going wrong.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
I remember reading about a product that does the same, except that it produced a white noise that made eavesdropping difficult. Sounds like the same goal and result...without the mindless chatter. Martin Tibbitts
And what company in their right mind is going to allow this? It's a cute technical solution that inserts even more noise into the workspace. Like many cute technical solutions, were these people even thinking of what the real world impact would be? Or do they just have the tunnel vision of, Hey, it works and solves the immediate problem. What more is required?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
(I worked on the audio masking algorithms for prototypes of this system. It's pretty much all written in Max/MSP. Here's a shot of the prototype rigs.)
Heck, that sounds like the voices in my head. I'd claim prior art, but I'd probably be sued by my company for keeping my voices to myself. Stupid company, stupid voic... We'll show em!
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
Does this mean the amount of noise in the office could double?
There is a great program called SoundTimer that plays random keystrokes and mouse clicks out of your PC speakers. Makes it sound like you're working really hard :D
SoundTimer makes you sound busy.
Here's the quote at the bottom of my
Karma: NaN
I've read about it in some Harry Potter book.
What, do I need a sig now?
will be "Babblefish" - which will translate your garbled conversation back!!
I've found that a fart machine works just as well. Give it a couple loud blasts, and everybody in earshot is laughing too loudly to pay attention to what you're saying.
Maybe that solution's too juvenile to work in most offices, but it's certainly fun for all.
Shortly after switching "Babble" on, no-one will be able to hear your phone conversations. This is because you won't be making any phone conversations; instead you'll be laying face-down in the nearest ER being asked how those speakers got there.
If Bubba's in the next cube (or a few cubes away) your voice and the babble are approximately the same distance away, and will sound equally loud.
And how come no one has mentioned The Cone of Silence?
Unlimited growth == Cancer.
I guess the nerds here and at Newsweek don't get out much. Applied Minds and Babble, their product for Herman Miller, were featured in a June 21st Wired News article (http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,67951 ,00.html). It was subsequently featured on a couple of TV news magazine shows where the demo was somewhat underwhelming....
A new device encourages rapid employee turnover... A new way to shove people into forming their own corporation and working at home. Perhaps there really will be an "ownership society" after all. Hey! George W. Bush is a Prophet. He knew all along; he knew. What did he know? hahaha He knew when we "applied our minds" to the problem, we would succeed. http://tinyurl.com/8vbk8 . Wow! Applying the ol' human brain! What a rush. Makes me want to run out an hold a sign at th' street corner admitting I invent stuff.
Obviously cannot configure a web server / internet connection that won't get slashdotted.
Now this, just after I got my cones of silence working.
You can mod me down, but you cannot call me a coward.