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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
by dzink 8y ago
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: punitive or targeted spam, punishment (security alarm, military grade crowd repellent, thief targeting, etc). Also possible: misinformation, generating confusion and chaos, making people feel schizophrenic. Weapon in the making. Good uses are also possible - targeted communication to people who can’t hold devices (surgeon during surgery, vr headsets, helmet headphones, etc, but that’s too cheap a use case for such an expensive laser, so weaponization is more likely.
- rkagerer 8y agoThose 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 without having to stick anything in my ear.
- koonsolo 8y agoA 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 wants to have stuff for free without ads, but that's just not how a functional economy works.
- SCHiM 8y agoAt one point the TV was without ads too! My point: a netflix with ads will be more profitable than one without. However they cannot get away with that right now, competition, etc. Maybe never, but there's a reason ads came around, even for people who paid for television.
- ben_w 8y agoIt still is, if you watch only the BBC in the UK. Of course, people still moan about “being forced to pay for it”, even when you tell them how to legally stop paying for it.
- antepodius 8y agoYou can't legally not pay for the bbc and then watch, say, ITV, though.
- ben_w 8y agoYou can if you only watch ITV through thrir online catchup service. When the UK government closed the “iPlayer loophole”, the new rules covered literally only BBC iPlayer. At least, that’s what the TV licencing website says, I don’t know the name of the actual law so I can’t look it up.
- swebs 8y agoHow would you do that?
- ben_w 8y agoThe requirement for a TV licence is specifically “live” and “BBC iPlayer”. Any online service that isn’t live and isn’t iPlayer, isn’t covered by the legislation; many (most?) of the other UK TV broadcasters have their own online catchup/on demand services.
- Nasrudith 8y agoOf course getting people to pay twice for the same thing is more profitable. It is also far less sustainable in a competitive market. With time is money and media backlogs many would rather just use their Steam backlog or DVD library.
- ricardobeat 8y agoThat’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.
- stochastic_monk 8y agoI grew up listening to rare classical treasures. Many of these were bootlegs of live performances by legends. These recordings will largely not last.
- Joe-Z 8y agoWell of course, everyone wants free stuff without paying for it. That's just as much an economic principle as the one you brought up. However, I don't think services which offer a free-but-with-ads-version are the issue here. After all you could just not use those services. I think the way bigger issue is the ubiquitousness of advertisements/spam in our daily life. Most e-mail traffic is spam. If you walk around in your city you most probably get to see an ad every couple of meters. And this is not just your local butcher putting up a sign with today's specials. These are footholds of international corporations which manipulate your emotions so they can sell you their shitty products (Oh, I forgot, it's not shitty, after all if I believe the ads your corporation somehow has some deep connection to my family life and that's what makes the product so great!) How it ever got like that is insanity in its own right. Now giving these public space polluters another tool for manipulating people? I can't see much good coming off of it.
- amelius 8y agoCan't we just make (targeted) advertising illegal? It would solve so many problems ...
- jp555 8y agoYou’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.
- Nasrudith 8y agoNah only regulations will work from a tragedy of the commons situation. Look at Spam email - that shit is clogging systems and leading to a relatively massive overhead. Because they can make 1/100th of a penny at 1/1000 a penny in cost they will just keep on doing it indefinitely - damn the externalities. I am very unimpressed by targeted advertising - it seems to be more a metamarketing thing since clients think they are getting more while the suggestions only gather enough to be creepy and useless compared to "what am I looking at right now?". I accidentally managed to flip Youtube ads gender targetting in a ham fisted way once in a week despite me telling them already.
- jp555 8y agoSo you’re saying you’d like targeting to be better?
- amelius 8y agoI'm currently seeing ads for a product that I just bought and don't need to buy again for at least a year ...
- jp555 8y agoSo you’d agree better targeting is needed?
- anoncake 8y ago
- teekert 8y agoOr I'm a spy and I know people will be triggered by on body devices...
- ataturk 8y ago1.) 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.
- dec0dedab0de 8y agoMy 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
- ada1981 8y agoThis could also be a boon for the faith healing industry.
- Simon_says 8y agoHe already mentioned misinformation.
- gwbas1c 8y agoI think it would make a great alternative to headphones and desktop speakers. It would be perfect for an office computer, or an arcade console.
- nerdponx 8y agoI suppose it could be used in espionage situations where it would be too risky to carry a receiver.