Tuesday, May 31, 2005
03:07 PM
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No Privacy in Your Cubicle? Try an Electronic Silencer: "Xeni Jardin:
An article by John Markoff in this weekend's New York Times about an amazing creation from two of the world's most amazing minds -- Danny Hillis and Bran Ferren.

Maxwell Smart's 'cone of silence' is finally a reality.

Two people in an office here were having a tête-à-tête, but it was impossible for a listener standing nearby to understand what they were saying. The conversation sounded like a waterfall of voices, both tantalizingly familiar and yet incomprehensible.

The cone of silence, called Babble, is actually a device composed of a sound processor and several speakers that multiply and scramble voices that come within its range. About the size of a clock radio, the first model is designed for a person using a phone, but other models will work in open office space.

The voice scrambling technology used in Babble was developed by Applied Minds, a research and consulting firm founded by Danny Hillis, a distinguished computer architect, and Bran Ferren, an industrial designer and Hollywood special effects wizard.

Link"

(Via Boing Boing.)