© Kazutaka Kurihara | Koji TsukadaA diagram shows how the speech jammer (pictured bottom right) might work.
Some people never know when to shut up during meetings, movies or while yammering away on the phone at public libraries. Now Japanese scientists have come up with a portable speech-jamming gun that forces obnoxious talkers to come to a stuttering halt.
The "SpeechJammer" device uses a direction-sensitive microphone and speaker to silence talkers with their own words - a psychological trick that creates a delay between the time talkers speak and the time when they hear the words coming out of their mouths. The hearing delay trips up the brain's thinking processes and causes the person to stutter.
It's like hacking people's minds, rather than using a cell phone jammer to disable talkers' mobile gadgets.
Such a clever gadget could impose a blessed silence in public spaces and at meetings, so that even the quietest people can take turns having their say or simply enjoy the lack of noise. The breakthrough was first reported by Technology Review, which threw in its own suggestion for installing the device at the United Nations.
Comment: On the same subject, read Death by Roller Coaster.