All About Working

This was just too amazing not to post on this blog. It seems as though Joe Paradiso and Yasuhiro Ono of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have just patented a system for a roving cone of silence, so that you can walk around your office building without anyone ever eavesdropping on you.

Sound like something out of a future shock movie? Well it’s real and it’s here now!

The problem the inventors worked on was how to stop the sound of conversations in an office from being heard. For example, if you are talking on the telephone, how can you prevent everyone within a certain range from hearing your conversation?

The solution they came up with is a sound-damping sensor, comprised of an infra-red motion-detector, a speaker and a microphone. These would be scattered around the walls of an office. Employees can then activate a personal mute button from their computer. The system locks onto you, identifies anyone close enough to eavesdrop, and hits them with a murmur of white noise so they can’t hear you.

Wow – that is amazing.

Sound masking systems have been on the rise in popularity lately. Babble and Accumask already are on the market. They shroud voices by mixing them with randomized noise. But this one allows it be controlled on demand by a single system.

Initial word is that the downside that the system required a lot of infrastructure.