6 ms·

Can't wait till rogue arrays of lasers start beaming advertisements directly into your ear while walking down the street.

baroffoos 8y ago
Why not just play it over a speaker like is often done?
- raihansaputra 8y ago
  Well, now you can directly target people so personalized ads when you're walking down the street. I'm scared it would devolve to pseudo-hallucinations ('did you hear that?').
  - cronix 8y ago
    Or subliminal messages/mind control. I imagine psychiatrist visits would be up due to this annoying voice in peoples heads. lol.
- vinni2 8y ago
  Coz then you can personalize and target?
- peteretep 8y ago
  Because then it's obvious where it came from. Much better to spam people anonymously from a distance. People annoying other people with laser pointers is going to become _so_ much more annoying.
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    > People annoying other people with laser pointers is going to become _so_ much more annoying. True. Antisocial behaviour gets orders of magnitude worse and more prevalent once you can actually make money with it.
themodelplumber 8y ago
Hopefully the ad tech uses the lower-acoustic-clarity method mentioned. It'll be like bus driver announcement white noise. "Wah, wah. And if you wah wah wah, visit wah wah wah dot com today." Edit: I also wonder how it works if you modulate or otherwise moderate the interface between ear surfaces and ear-surroundings moisture, since that's apparently the resource this method needs in order to work at all. Shopping with headphones on can be a pretty nice experience IMO, and maybe it doubles as a countermeasure.
peterarmstrong 8y ago
Yep, this is going to be Altered Carbon or Ghost In The Shell type of crap. Whatever you Google for will follow you everywhere, and nag you until you buy it...
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- naniwaduni 8y ago
  Precedent suggests that it'll nag you after you buy it... maybe both.
  - ben_w 8y ago
    “We noticed you bought a gravestone for your mother. Your mother‘s birthday is coming up soon, would you like to buy her a box of chocolates?”
    - dwighttk 8y ago
      Also here’s 15 other gravestones to complete your collection.
      - balabaster 8y ago
        People who looked at these gravestones also bought these zombie movies.
        ben_w 8y ago
        “… and that led me to werewolves, which is how Amazon turned me into a furry”
        balabaster 8y ago
        Other furries also liked these dog bowls
tzs 8y ago
That's actually been done, although no lasers were involved. You can modulate an ultrasonic beam with an audible sound in such a way that someone hit by the beam will hear the audible sound. Ultrasonic beams can be focused into a fairly narrow region. See [1]. They used this in an ad in New York in 2007 for the TV series "Paranormal State", which was premiering soon on A&E. It was a paranormal themed reality show. They had a big billboard for the series on the side of a building, and Holosonic's "audio spotlight" technology on the roof that sent two beams of modulated ultrasound down to the sidewalk. Pedestrians who walked directly into the beams would hear a disembodied voice whispering creepy things like "Who's there? It's not your imagination", but someone next to them who didn't enter the beam would hear nothing. Here's a video [2]. Here's an article about that ad campaign, and it also mentions some other ad uses of the technology [3]. Interesting quote from it: > Joe Pompei, president and founder of Holosonics, said the creepy approach is key to drawing attention to A&E's show. But, he noted, the technology was designed to avoid adding to noise pollution. "If you really want to annoy a lot of people, a loudspeaker is the best way to do it," he said. "If you set up a loudspeaker on the top of a building, everybody's going to hear that noise. But if you're only directing that sound to a specific viewer, you're never going to hear a neighbor complaint from street vendors or pedestrians. The whole idea is to spare other people." [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_from_ultrasound https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_from_ultrasound [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwAeb3RBZ1Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwAeb3RBZ1Y [3] https://adage.com/article/news/hear-voices-ad/122491/ https://adage.com/article/news/hear-voices-ad/122491/
- balabaster 8y ago
  This is beyond creepy. Words fail me.

baroffoos 8y ago

Why not just play it over a speaker like is often done?

raihansaputra 8y ago
Well, now you can directly target people so personalized ads when you're walking down the street. I'm scared it would devolve to pseudo-hallucinations ('did you hear that?').
- cronix 8y ago
  Or subliminal messages/mind control. I imagine psychiatrist visits would be up due to this annoying voice in peoples heads. lol.
vinni2 8y ago
Coz then you can personalize and target?
peteretep 8y ago
Because then it's obvious where it came from. Much better to spam people anonymously from a distance. People annoying other people with laser pointers is going to become _so_ much more annoying.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  > People annoying other people with laser pointers is going to become _so_ much more annoying. True. Antisocial behaviour gets orders of magnitude worse and more prevalent once you can actually make money with it.

themodelplumber 8y ago

Hopefully the ad tech uses the lower-acoustic-clarity method mentioned. It'll be like bus driver announcement white noise. "Wah, wah. And if you wah wah wah, visit wah wah wah dot com today." Edit: I also wonder how it works if you modulate or otherwise moderate the interface between ear surfaces and ear-surroundings moisture, since that's apparently the resource this method needs in order to work at all. Shopping with headphones on can be a pretty nice experience IMO, and maybe it doubles as a countermeasure.

peterarmstrong 8y ago

Yep, this is going to be Altered Carbon or Ghost In The Shell type of crap. Whatever you Google for will follow you everywhere, and nag you until you buy it...

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
naniwaduni 8y ago
Precedent suggests that it'll nag you after you buy it... maybe both.
- ben_w 8y ago
  “We noticed you bought a gravestone for your mother. Your mother‘s birthday is coming up soon, would you like to buy her a box of chocolates?”
  - dwighttk 8y ago
    Also here’s 15 other gravestones to complete your collection.
    - balabaster 8y ago
      People who looked at these gravestones also bought these zombie movies.
      - ben_w 8y ago
        “… and that led me to werewolves, which is how Amazon turned me into a furry”
        balabaster 8y ago
        Other furries also liked these dog bowls

tzs 8y ago

That's actually been done, although no lasers were involved. You can modulate an ultrasonic beam with an audible sound in such a way that someone hit by the beam will hear the audible sound. Ultrasonic beams can be focused into a fairly narrow region. See [1]. They used this in an ad in New York in 2007 for the TV series "Paranormal State", which was premiering soon on A&E. It was a paranormal themed reality show. They had a big billboard for the series on the side of a building, and Holosonic's "audio spotlight" technology on the roof that sent two beams of modulated ultrasound down to the sidewalk. Pedestrians who walked directly into the beams would hear a disembodied voice whispering creepy things like "Who's there? It's not your imagination", but someone next to them who didn't enter the beam would hear nothing. Here's a video [2]. Here's an article about that ad campaign, and it also mentions some other ad uses of the technology [3]. Interesting quote from it: > Joe Pompei, president and founder of Holosonics, said the creepy approach is key to drawing attention to A&E's show. But, he noted, the technology was designed to avoid adding to noise pollution. "If you really want to annoy a lot of people, a loudspeaker is the best way to do it," he said. "If you set up a loudspeaker on the top of a building, everybody's going to hear that noise. But if you're only directing that sound to a specific viewer, you're never going to hear a neighbor complaint from street vendors or pedestrians. The whole idea is to spare other people." [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_from_ultrasound https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_from_ultrasound [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwAeb3RBZ1Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwAeb3RBZ1Y [3] https://adage.com/article/news/hear-voices-ad/122491/ https://adage.com/article/news/hear-voices-ad/122491/

balabaster 8y ago
This is beyond creepy. Words fail me.