Jeff Bier’s Impulse Response—Soused Signals

Submitted by Jeff Bier on Wed, 01/21/2009 - 17:00

So I’m sitting at the Las Vegas airport last week, on my way home from CES, trying to get some work done on my laptop—but I can’t. Why? Approximately every eighth word is an expletive.

It reminded me of how, a few weeks ago on a train, I was treated to a loud, slightly slurred, play-by-play account of a young woman’s recent sexual exploits, as she recounted them to a friend via cell phone.

Please, people, I am trying to concentrate here!

“Geez,” I think, “Why can’t these people get breathalyzers embedded in their cell phones, so they won’t torture the rest of us by drinking and dialing?” In fact, Samsung already developed a breathalyzer-equipped cell phone that lets you program specific numbers that can’t be dialed once your blood alcohol level hits “totally crocked”—so you won’t go calling your ex and getting all weepy at 3 am. Unfortunately for me, this phone doesn’t appear to be available in the US, but it looks like you can buy a breathalyzer plug-in for your iPhone or iPod. (This product is intended to reduce drunk driving, but I can also imagine programming your iPod not to play specific songs when you’re drunk so that you won’t send yourself into a hopeless depression. I mean, is it really a good idea to listen to old REO Speedwagon songs after five martinis? I don’t think so.)

Anyway, in my opinion, these products are a step in the right direction, but they don’t go far enough. They may protect the cell phone owner from potential embarrassment (not to mention reducing drunk driving) but what about protecting the people sitting around them?

Soon handsets should have sufficient signal processing capabilities to do active noise cancellation on the caller’s voice—if they’re drunk, the phone automatically activates a “cone of silence,” sparing bystanders from overhearing an embarrassing conversation. Then only the hapless callee will have to listen to their drunken pal. But now that I think about it, why should the callee have to suffer?  There’s no good reason to even connect these kinds of calls. Instead, the phone can simply send an automated text message to the callee that says, “Drunken call from XXX-XXX-XXXX has been blocked,” while the caller’s phone pretends to connect the call and plays a series of synthesized “Uh huhs” and “Hmms” and “No ways!” every 30 seconds or so, in random order.  Let’s conserve our bandwidth… and our serenity.

Jennifer Eyre White of BDTI contributed to this article.

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