Shut Up and Listen

Up until now, getting someone to shut their trap has been a difficult feat. We’ve relied on shushing, witty insults, and even good old duct tape, but these methods have been useless, difficult, and assault, respectively.
But all that toil has come to an end, with the new speech jamming gun affectionately known as the speech jammer. According to Popular Science on March 1st, 2012, Japanese researchers Kurihara and Tsukada have taken the simple design of a radar gun, combined it with a microphone and a speaker, to create Delayed Auditory Feedback.
This invention means several benefits:
 
1. Ability to treat stuttering
 
According to the Stuttering Foundation, “DAF used in speech jamming guns induces fluency in many individuals who stutter.” The East Carolina University conducted an experiment with 9 adults with stutters who would conduct 15 business phone calls, and without the participants knowing, DAF was applied on the telephones. The result? There was nearly a 60% reduction in stuttering frequency among the participants.
 
2. Moderate discourse
 
In an article of Japan Today, Kurihara and Tsukada reveal that their initial purpose for the device was to use it in public settings on “people who just can’t follow normal rules of conversation.” For example, in the recent presidential debates, moderator Jim Lehrer desperately needed this speech jammer when President Obama and Governor Romney “accidentally” went over their allotted speaking times.

While I'm sure we can all think of that one person to use the speech jammer on, the device doesn't come without heavier implications.
 
1. Ending up in the wrong hands
 
For example, in a public setting, such as a political rally, the device in the hands of an audience member could be used to silence the speakers. Whereas in the hands of an oppressive regime, political dissenters and demonstrators could be completely shut down vocally.
 
2. The sound and silence paradox

If people are speaking or acting with the threat of silence upon them, this can potentially change their behavior which will stifle creative thinking and problem solving. This raises an important question: At what point does a disciplinary measure become a deterrent? At what point does a simple shush towards one person turn into the power to silence an entire generation?

What do you think? If this device hit the stores, would you be the first in line? Sound off in the comment section below!

Meanwhile, curious to see how this device works? Check it out for yourself:

Raising Dead Languages

Sanskrit

From Latin to Ancient Greek to Sanskrit, it has been more than thousands of years since words have been spoken in these respective languages. For any culture, its language is one of the primary ways it stays alive. Without the continuation of the language, the culture loses its significance as well as its influence.   

For a long time, the only way to stave off a language from going extinct was to find the few native speakers and physically document the language or to labor over documents and decode the language. One prominent example of trying to save a dying language is the journey of Geoffrey Khan, a linguist at the University of Cambridge. His goal was to document Aramaic, a Semitic language related to Hebrew and Arabic, and was the common tongue used throughout the Middle East. Aramaic even dates back to the time of Jesus Christ, as he cried in Aramaic on the cross, "Elahi, Elahi, lema shabaqtani?” (“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”). Despite its presence throughout a majority of history, Aramaic is down to its last one or two generation of speakers. As a result, Khan has taken the extended effort to interview and record the native speakers. While the direct interaction with those who speak the language is a personal way of keeping a language alive, it just isn't humanely possible to speak to everyone, nor are there always people who speak all the languages. 

However, with our advanced computers, raising dead languages might not be out of reach. In fact, according to Canadian scientist Alexandre Bouchard-Cote and his research team at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver theorize that the world's dead languages could be reconstructed using computer programs to build extinct languages, word-by-word. In other words, computers could use current languages to recreate extinct ones. 

Although the future of dying languages seems a little brighter, this raises an important question. Is it right to allow technology to keep languages alive, when languages fundamentally begin through speech?