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Cube Privacy Via Gibberish
fury88 writes "CNN is running a story on a new device created by Herman Miller to help with lack of privacy in the cube life. It's apparently a device that will spit out gibberish when you are talking on the phone. You record a few words as instructed by the device and when you are having conversations that may be private, it will spit out sounds that sound like a clone of yourself all talking at once. Frankly I have to think this would be annoying after awhile. As if dealing with your project manager sitting next to you wasn't enough, now you get to hear several versions of your Project Manager talking at once. Talk about insanity!"
Indeed, another dupe.
Actually, it's a dupe. Although the last article was from NYT, and not CNN.
... a dupe. Although TFA back then called the device an "Electronic Silencer" it seems to be the same product.
In some of the offices I worked in, they had white-noise speakers mounted at regular intervals across the ceiling (the technical term is a "sound masking system"). When they weren't being used as a public-broadcast system to announce that the pizza arrived or that someone had left their car lights on, they would be used to generate white noise that would reduce the range that conversations would be heard. It was freaky to see two people chatting at a distance of three workspaces away and not actually hear what they were saying.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
A lot of work on Babble was done by Appled Minds for Herman Miller. Here's a Wired article that describes the project:
t w=wn_tophead_1
1 585,a9-c407-n350,00.html
http://wired.com/news/20050621_appliedminds.html?
Here's Herman Miller's press release for the device:
http://www.hermanmiller.com/CDA/SSA/News/Story/0,
--Pat