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.

Comments

What's wrong with a hand operated air raid siren?

[Steven Reddie]

It would also make calls unintelligible within 4 feet.

"I hear voices"

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Great

[SpectreBinary]

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.

What good is this?

[__aalnoi707]

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

Meaningless Snipits

[Goody]

What if the "meaningless snipits" just happen to have the words "fire", "bankruptcy", "layoffs", "harassment", "pregnant" or "terror" in them?

... and we're hiring

[yppiz]

If you are in the SF area and very well versed in Java, C, or AJAX-like techniques, and looking to work on really interesting problems, let me know. Bonus points if you're a hacker (in the traditional sense).

--Pat

Active noise cancellation anyone??

[Plammox]

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.

Re:Active noise cancellation anyone??

[Znork]

Actually, there are _very_ effective noise cancellation solutions.

They're called 'walls', and come in a variety of efficiency levels.

However, they're probably not 'hip' enough for todays corporate interior designers, and they may not be patentable, which makes this solution a more desireable one for the interested parties.

Prior Art

[3D-nut]

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.

Re:Brilliant

[ozmanjusri]

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.

Yes, I believe this device could be a change catalyst which would allow us to re-engineer our business case and leverage best-practice synergies to proactively actualise our bottom-line.