It’s 6 pm and you’re riding the subway back home. It’s been a long, hard day & you feel your eyelids are getting heavy. Suddenly, just when you rest your head on the window & start to doze off, you hear a voice offering you a nice discount on a smartphone plan.
You lift your head startled, and the voice instantly disappears! You turn around to see if one of the passengers was talking to you, but everybody is silent.
You rest your head on the window again, and the voice returns, now telling you to consider a trip to Jamaica. WTF??!!
This episode, which seems straight out of a Philip K. Dick novel, could one day become a reality, ‘thanks’ to a technology that relies on the conduction of sound to the inner ear through the bones of the skull. Using the same principle, 2 German companies have released a video purportedly showing train commuters receiving audio messages through the vibration of the glass windows:
“Some people don’t like advertising in general. But this is really a new technology. [It might] not only be used for advertising, but also for music, entertainment, mass transport information, weather reports and so on.”
Because you know advertisers will never be satisfied until they can invade your very thoughts & dreams.
Oh, and in case you were wondering, the answer is YES: they can hear your voice through the vibration of walls & windows, too:
Srsly, wiretap bugs are sooooo 1960’s… but I guess some agencies are too nostalgic.
