SpeechJammer Shut Up Invention

Wall Street Journal (blog):

The ability to speak well is not a talent most people have. We all have talking ticks. But in the age of mobile phones the habit that grates on others’ nerves the most is perhaps not knowing when to stop talking.

Luckily, two Japanese researchers have come up with a persuasive device to compel people to zip it. Kazutaka Kurihara and Koji Tsukada developed the SpeechJammer, a device that disrupts a person’s speech by delaying the sound of the speaker’s voice for several-hundred milliseconds. It usually forces a person to pause – kind of like when there’s an echo during a phone call. Enough jams and perhaps they’ll give up.

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