Voiceless microphone
Ambient Corporation has developed a neckband that picks up subvocal communication and translates it into synthesized speech. New Scientist has an article on the technology and a video demonstration that's quite impressive. The applications range from cell phones to aids for people who have lost the capacity to speak due to certain neurological conditions. Called the Audeo, it currently recognizes about 150 words and phrases. A new version without a limited vocabulary is slated for release later this year. From New Scientist:
With careful training a person can send nerve signals to their vocal cords without making a sound. These signals are picked up by the neckband and relayed wirelessly to a computer that converts them into words spoken by a computerised voice.Link to New Scientist, Link to The Audeo
Users needn't worry about that the system voicing their inner thoughts though. Callahan says producing signals for the Audeo to decipher requires "a level above thinking". Users must think specifically about voicing words for them to be picked up by the equipment.
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Also, you must think in Russian. Must... think... in Russian...
Ventriloquism for all! Technology based vaudeville is coming
I'm going to strap these to every close talker I come by
Anyone think of Ender Wiggin in Speaker for the Dead when they read this?
Asimov may have been the first to conceive of this. In The Caves of Steel he describes a secretary at the yeast plant using a "hushphone," which picks up tiny movements of her vocal chords and turns them into speech at the other end.
He wrote this in 1953. What a guy.
Actually, no, I thought of the sub-vocalization technology in Cory Doctorow's "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom".
Seriously, here on Cory's site, there is no mention of the ties to one of his major stories?
@Spikeles
The Enders shadow series was great, and Enders game was awesome, but I try not to think of the other stories...
Awesome ! I always thought - why don't they do that. Another device that they should make is a MIDI controller (pitch to note), or maybe something that reads hand muscle strain, so that I woudln't actually have to play the piano =)
Ho Spoon,
Speaker for the Dead won the Hugo and the Nebula, ne? I always think of Peter and Val when Teresa unmasks a new sock puppet.
if you combine the Audeo with a Bone Phone, do you get crazy skeletal feedback? and what would that sound like?
Hah! Actually, this reminds me of this sci fi book I read when I was in possibly 4th grade; My teacher is an alien. I remember something about some sort of sub-vocal system.
I don't see how this could work since most sounds are produced by the lips and toungue with the vocal cords just varying the pitch and volume. Am I missing something? How could measuring the vocal cords tell the difference between mmmmmm and nnnnnnn?
The first description of subvocalisation I read in SF was in David Brin's Earth.
I remember the discussion of the technology needing a clear and focused mind, which is why the airforce trialled and abandoned it, because all their testosterone laden pilots would have random thoughts that made their planes fall out of the sky...
The first thing that came to mind after reading 'subvocal' was schizophrenia. I remember reading that sometimes when schizophrenics hear voices, they are actually speaking the voices subvocally.
What if I get really good at using this voiceless microphone that I can't switch off? I might think I'm talking to someone but I'm really not, and then I might have to talk to myself. Then again, I can talk to myself whether someone is there or not.
Ryan, I think it was a bandaid and an earring that the kid covered with a fleshy bandaid.
Spoon, the other books are amazing! Much more elaborate and involved, and Speaker raises important questions- and has a beautiful moral. It takes a long time to get into, I had it sitting on my bookshelf for ages, but now it's my favorite of the Quartet.
The first thing I thought of was my friend Avan. He's mute, and so if someone wants to have a swift conversation with him, they have to know sign language, and people usually treat him like he's stupid and speak loudly. Something like this could help him a lot.
Liars. They are both patenting MIND READING as well as shutting these secret classified patents up by issuing misleading ones. Sub-vocalization in the neck MUSCLES is literally thinking outloud, practically speaking outload. Do you think, no, that putting the detection electrodes (now that computers are powerful enough to decode the weirdness of how the brain codes things) a little bit up the line of causation to the base of the skull instead of the neck, you know where the muscles impulses are still created, but then attenuated from reaching the neck by the hypothalamus in your forehead might be a better way to read thoughts, and even the difference between "Yeah, BoingBoing.net is really great. I love it!" vs. the cynically toned version of the same sentence: "YEAH....BoingBoing dot is...REALLY greeeeaat. I...LOVE it"? A second electrode will pick up sarcasm, irony or cynicism independently in a simple way, along with an infrared spectral based hormone blood level test indicator of anti-stress vs. stress hormone corisol vs. testosterone.
This is a child's play report about what they are really doing. Namely, the mind-reading part is passe, even. The signal to lift your finger is detectable 1/3 of a second before you can consciously push a button to indicate your decision to do so, even though video game generation studies indicate that it's only 1/100 a second to decide to shoot a bad guy before you push the trigger of the plastic gun on a wire.
And if you cut the brain in two, it makes it much easier to get the location of the plans of caught spies, since then you have TWO independent people to talk to. If you Scotch Tape an index card to their nose, then show the right eye a message (which oddly enough is routed to the left brain since the nerves cross over) to "drink a sip of water", then you ask the OTHER side of the brain (via sound-isolating earphones) "why" they took a drink of water, guess what happens? That side of the brain that merely observed the body taking a drink of water? It says: "because I was thirsty."
Having given up LSD "truth serum" research, which merely made people laugh at their Spy vs. Spy questions, the CIA had to rely on certain really loud Spice Girls songs, repeated for two weeks in solitary confinement, which made anybody confess to anything, uselessly.
Now they have a few new tools. Mad science has arrived. We officially live in the future now, but we wont hear about the real results for another 20 years, most of it being classified, and a propaganda campaign of publishing of minor (and dirt boring obvious) results will entice and excite us for now.
NikFromNYC (former DARPA funded Harvard researcher)
When this is really developed it would be interesting to hook it up to animals.
If it really is about something more in the brain than what comes out vocally.
Mayasthma-
Wouldn't the animal still speak in an untranslatable animal language? You could hook me up to one of these babies, and I'd still be only subvocalizing Pidgin German.
Aaaand does your username seperate as May Asthma? As in the godawful haunt of my (relative) youth?
When it comes with selectable James Earl Jones vocalization I'll cut my vocal chords and buy one.
It certainly makes me think of Ender and Jane, but I could swear I remember this idea from an older Asimov story. Either way, it gave me a nice tingle to read about this.
I've been wanting this since I read the Ender's series as as kid. With a cellphone, bluetooth earpiece, and Voice Command I already feel like I have part of it, I'm just missing the sub vocalization part.
to Mayasthma:
http://www.modernpooch.com/archives/FarSideDogCartoon.jpg
:D
Spoon, you can think what you will, but in my opinion, Xenocide is a very well-copyedited book.
Antinous (8), Scott Card won both the Hugo and the Nebula for Best Novel two years running, for Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead. It's the only time anyone's ever done that.
Ryan (10): My Teacher Is an Alien, by Bruce Coville. That's a great series.
Thornae (11): That was my thought: do I want a machine picking up all my glossolaliac subvocalizations? Or, worse, my tactless ones?
Nik, that's an interesting question: at what point does it stop being a very sensitive microphone, and turn into partial mindreading?