Truly We Live in an Age of Wonders

Truly We Live in an Age of Wonders

I just wanted to point to this article, which talks of hearing aids not just for the hearing impaired, which is an idea interesting enough in and of itself.

The couple of things that caught my attention:

In all seriousness, I could use the thingamajig that filters out background noise. If I get into a noisy type place, you might as well not try to have any conversation with me, since my primary contribution in said conversation would generally involve the word "Huh?"

But I liked this:

One of the exhibits, called surround-sound eyewear, uses four microphones built into a pair of glasses to amplify sound depending on which direction the wearer is facing.

"The result is a type of three-dimensional superhuman hearing similar to that found in certain animals such as coyotes," said designer Sam Hecht of London's Industrial Facility. The company harnessed a theory known as "superdirectivity beamforming" to build the specs, projected for release in 2007.

Anybody ever get in one of those 3-D sound demonstration booths that show up at some amusement type parks and electronics shows? One of my more undistiguished moments in life came in one of those, when I very nearly lost my shit when the sound of a dog growling came right behind my ear.

That's probably neither here nor there.

Still, I don't know that I want to hear everything that's going on around me. As I've said, I generally want something to block everything out.

This would be handy, kinda like a Tivo for your brain:

Another concept, the Goldfish, named for its short-term memory, is a set of earphones that would repeat the previous 10 seconds of conversation in case the wearer missed a snippet.

I can't count the number of times I've needed something like this.

I'll get introduced to someone, and halfway through that initial conversation my brain will say "Christ! I don't even have the first clue what this bozo's name is...."

But what I wanted to point out was this. It seems my prayers have been answered:

Very soon, we'll have the technology that would allow us to block out specific sounds we find annoying. Hell yes. Finally an alternative.

See, earplugs? They block everything out.

And it's inconsiderate, expensive and, ultimately, time consuming to simply silence those things that annoy me.

There just aren't enough hours in the day.