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New Technology Uses Lasers to Transmit Audible Messages to Specific People

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Re: New Technology Uses Lasers to Transmit Audible Messages to Specific People

#81

I love all the innovation that's created to warn us about active shooters, all to let the active shooters keep their guns.

That scenario seems contrived if you ask me. How likely is it that one of these expensive laser devices will just happen to be available at the scene of an active shooter incident? And if so, what advantage would it have compared to general PA announcements?

Re: New Technology Uses Lasers to Transmit Audible Messages to Specific People

#82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A consumer always pays, whether by paying or looking at advertisements. But the modern world offers nice alternatives now. I can watch movies and episodes without ads (thanks to Netflix), and can listen to all the songs in the world without ads (thanks to Spotify). Because I pay instead of watching ads. A lot of platforms and products offer the choice between looking at ads or letting you pay. But of course, everyone…

That’s a very bright view that doesn’t fully account for reality: Netflix has a tiny sliver of humanity’s film archive available, and while Spotify fares much better it still excludes a lot of content. In general you cannot pay to see the missing pieces in either, they are simply not available anywhere.

I grew up listening to rare classical treasures. Many of these were bootlegs of live performances by legends. These recordings will largely not last.

Re: New Technology Uses Lasers to Transmit Audible Messages to Specific People

#83
post #8

> The ability to send highly targeted audio signals over the air could be used to communicate across noisy rooms or warn individuals of a dangerous situation such as an active shooter. This strikes me as a rather bizarre example to use. What's special about active shooters that would warrant using lasers to beam whispered audio messages directly into someone's ear?

It's just one specific use case for this technology that came to mind for the researcher? Mass shootings are a pretty big deal, even if the odds of it happening to anyone is fairly low. Risk mitigation and death prevention seems like a pretty healthy choice for applying this technology, as opposed to saying something like "This could let someone beam targeted ads that only the target can hear!"

"We made this thing, I wonder what we could potentially do with it that would benefit people as much as possible?"

Re: New Technology Uses Lasers to Transmit Audible Messages to Specific People

#84
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It states 60db - that’s normal conversation volume. Does the paper say otherwise?

I could not find a reference to 60dB in the paper. It states 30dB SPL in the relevant plot, which is very quiet.

"In the lab, the researchers showed that commercially available equipment could transmit sound to a person more than 2.5 meters away at 60 decibels using the laser sweeping technique"

Granted, the laser sweeping technique trades off fidelity for the volume, this is still just laboratory tests and is not a "final product" in any sense.

Re: New Technology Uses Lasers to Transmit Audible Messages to Specific People

#85
post #23

If you want a sound in your year, you get a device for that. If you are a business wanting to notify people who trust you, you can give them devices or blast a speaker. This fills the use case of an actor distributing information to people who do not have enough contact or trust with that actor or who do not want the information (because they would willingly use their own device if they did). Most likely use cases: p…

1.) Identify mentally wavering individuals by way of health records. 2.) Locate a subject and plan exploit 3.) Begin successively ramping up suggestive impulses to commit violent acts 4.) Ensure subject has access to suitable weapons 5.) Cause a complete mental breakdown of subject

And you know the rest. It would explain a lot if this technology has already been available for some time and we're just finding out about it. It wouldn't even take many people to pull off, just a handful, maybe even just one.

Re: New Technology Uses Lasers to Transmit Audible Messages to Specific People

#86
This tech isn't new; there was an article 10+ years ago about an inventor who had a working prototype of this, and he was pitching the idea to the military, and the article detailed how he even went around messing with pedestrians by sending them audio only they could hear.

(That article has since been brought down, by the way.)

Re: New Technology Uses Lasers to Transmit Audible Messages to Specific People

#87
post #23

If you want a sound in your year, you get a device for that. If you are a business wanting to notify people who trust you, you can give them devices or blast a speaker. This fills the use case of an actor distributing information to people who do not have enough contact or trust with that actor or who do not want the information (because they would willingly use their own device if they did). Most likely use cases: p…

My first thought was adaptive surround sound. So everyone in the room got the perfect sound. Also a speakerphone that only you can hear would be nice

Re: New Technology Uses Lasers to Transmit Audible Messages to Specific People

#88
post #23

If you want a sound in your year, you get a device for that. If you are a business wanting to notify people who trust you, you can give them devices or blast a speaker. This fills the use case of an actor distributing information to people who do not have enough contact or trust with that actor or who do not want the information (because they would willingly use their own device if they did). Most likely use cases: p…

Those depressing sentiments reflect an unfortunate reality of our time. The world wasn't always bloated with spammy advertising, and I'm hopeful that fad will eventually give way to more human-friendly business models. Yes, any new technology comes with potential for abuse. But I'm still excited that maybe one day this tech could be miniaturized enough (or deployed responsibly) to give me wireless virtual earbuds wit…

Can't we just make (targeted) advertising illegal? It would solve so many problems ...

Re: New Technology Uses Lasers to Transmit Audible Messages to Specific People

#90
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those depressing sentiments reflect an unfortunate reality of our time. The world wasn't always bloated with spammy advertising, and I'm hopeful that fad will eventually give way to more human-friendly business models. Yes, any new technology comes with potential for abuse. But I'm still excited that maybe one day this tech could be miniaturized enough (or deployed responsibly) to give me wireless virtual earbuds wit…

Can't we just make (targeted) advertising illegal? It would solve so many problems ...

You’ll get more ads that don’t relate to you, so you’ll feel like there’s more advertising.

If you don’t want to be bothered by ads, we probably need better targeting, not a ban on it.

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