The Village Green

Techcrunch has posted a video about a new technology called voiceless communication.  This is a fascinating technology that has the ability to do both great good and potentially a great deal of harm.  On the positive side, those who are not able to produce recognizable speech would no longer be excluded from any voice-related activities.  Imagine a world where no one knows what the word ‘mute’ means except in the context of a cell phone or TV.

One potential use for the technology that is demonstrated in the video is the ability to carry on phone conversations without anyone else hearing your end of the conversation. I can see the positive in that as well.

On the other hand (there is always an other hand) the ability to conduct conversations undetected means that students would be able to communicate with each other without any restrictions.  Just imagine the cheating possibilities! We’ll have to install jamming devices in schools in order to prevent students from talking to each other.

Turn that around, and you have the ability to listen in on anyone who might be subvocalizing.  This seems just one step away from reading someone’s mind. Once we are all fitted with an RFID chip to keep track of where we are, that same chip, or another one, might also be tracking our words, both internal and spoken.

Don’t get me wrong, I applaud the voiceless communication effort and think it should continue.  There is much more to be gained in terms of removing barriers for a marginalized segment of society than there is a theoretical danger of the loss of privacy. Still, I think this is a good example of the normal development of technology.  There is a problem, and someone provides a technical solution.  That solution necessarily comes with its own set of problems, and very little thought is given to those new problems because in most cases we don’t know what they are until the solution is in place.