Japanese inventors, presumably looking for some peace and quiet, have invented SpeechJammer -- a device that can instantly shut down a person's ability to speak.
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You might be familiar with that odd echo when your speech is played back to you immediately after you've spoken. It happens sometimes on speakerphones, conference calls, and the odd speaking engagement in a football stadium when you ask people to "please rise for our national anthem."
It's even more vexing when your speech is played back to you between 9.2 and 192 milliseconds later -- to the point where you're positively speechless. This disorienting phenomenon is called Delayed Auditory Feedback.
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The SpeechJammer prototype is a handheld device that looks a lot like a radar gun the cops use to nab you for speeding. It records your speech, then plays it back at you within that crucial millisecond time frame.
The result? Its makers at Arvix (PDF link) say it's fully capable of "disturbing" speech from as far as 100 feet away. Just think: Librarians can halt chatterboxes in midsentence, malevolent dictators can stop speech they don't like, and harried parents might be able to muzzle their talkative teenagers.
No matter the high hopes of this intimidating device, I have to wonder if it is impossible to speak when your words are played back to you, no matter what the duration of the delay. If you concentrate hard enough, you can do it. I had an important phone call like that last week, and somehow struggled through. Still, it was a stressful experience.
How about you? Let us know in the comments if you think you could overcome this trap-shutting thingamajig.
This story originally published on Mashable here.
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