Slashdot Mirror
Beamed Sonic Advertising Is Coming
newtley writes in with a story from Ad Age a few days back. "Advertisers are determined to get into your head by one means or another, and Holosonic Research Labs has found yet another way of invading your privacy in the name of forcing you pay attention. You're walking down a street in New York when all of a sudden, a woman's voice whispers 'Who's that? Who's There?' No, you weren't having a psychotic episode; you were being subjected without your permission to 'sound in a narrow beam, just like light.' It was coming at you from a rooftop speaker seven stories up."
maybe in the us that's the case, but as slashdot is relevant to places that actually have privacy laws that deserve being called such, it's not paranoia to point out the privacy implications of such developments.
Truth arises more readily from error than from confusion. -Francis Bacon
Isn't it fascinating to see this paranoia at Slashdot?
These are echoes of the voices that feared the coming of the horseless carriage and the light bulb and the Zeppelin Tube*. Why would anyone need such a thing? What about the children?!! It will only lead to heartache and a chronic case of the Buffalo shuffles. It's the work of the Devil!
As it happens this 'technology' has been around for at least a century in the form of parabolic reflectors. I have personally participated in an experiment where I could communicate normally at a distance with someone via two ten foot reflectors. This required no moving nor electronic parts. A whisper could be heard in full fidelity in the midst of chaotic noises in the environment.
Some years ago people developed smaller electronic devices that could focus sound fairly well. There were hints about applications for these devices, including military uses. I have waited for news of actual products to no avail until today.
Don't be afraid, little people.
*[The Zeppelin tube: the tube of unlimited power--can only be used for good--or for evil.]
...omphaloskepsis often...
It's not a gimmick. You're a nation of psychotics led by a genocidal madman, and you're fucking my country up meddling in our economic and political processes. I'm scared of you, because you're fascists and war criminals, you keep people in concentration camps, and you're about to annex my country. You're not the one that needs to worry, I am.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
I was replying to a person who commented that the constant bombardment of propaganda would make him want to start shooting people. That seems to happen down there quite a bit, except they always shoot fellow suffering victims, never to the perpetrators. Like the school killings that happen over.
As for my axe-to-grind, the US have got a million immigrants in concentration camps. Right now.
You know, the US immigration department tried to bully my girlfriend, an ordinary graphic designer, who lived in the US for a good chunk of her life, but left the country several years prior and wasn't even in the country anymore, to come back to the US so she could be charged before being formally deported. Because she separated from her partner and left.
Other people who wanted to be reasonable, keep their future travel options open, and agreed to do this have ended up disappearing into jail cells for years. That's the plain truth. I'm honestly afraid to even fly through your crazy fucking nation. People get tortured to death because someone at the airport was feeling itchy, and it's not even a big deal. It happened last month.
As for annexing my country, I live in Canada. We have back room deals to create a single currency now that yours is tanking, we have out in the open plans to create a North American Union, we have an open conspiracy to dredge the St. Lawrence canal into a super-shipping highway and turn the northeastern part of the continent into a poor, industrialized economic zone called Atlantica like some third world country. And you've got a million tanks sitting on our border.
The US have been taking all our oil and using it to sustain your war. Members of your government corrupt our politicians to enforce rules that tax us for our cultural and intellectual works so you can pay us for those resources with the right to behave as we wish. That is ALSO right out in the open.
The US bribed our politicians into privatizing, been an ongoing process since the Regan years, and bought everything up, and now all our way-more-educated-than-your-people work in call centers for your companies. Because we got sold out by people who traded the common wealth they were entrusted with for monopoly money from the Fed, then moved south.
None of this fucked up shit, including the propaganda tools that this article is about, is even hidden, it just happens right out there in the open. Enough that people were commenting about shooting in the streets as a response before I posted.
So, in a nutshell, your country fucked us totally just like they do everyone else, and now they're trying to just take over.
As far as I'm concerned, I hope your countries political and economic structures absolutely fucking collapse so we can start fixing our own without your meddling. But that's not what's going to happen. Your nation is trying to take everything that is ours and squeeze us like slaves for everything we have, and that's only going to get worse to the point of being unbearable as your unsustainable systems come closer to collapse.
As this is an international site, and as I am a loudmouth, I like to come around and point these sorts of things out, and I'm not obligated to stop. So, have fun on your road to hell.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth