Japanese researchers Kazutaka Kurihara of the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology and Koji Tsukada of Ochanomizu University have developed a portable SpeechJammer gun that can silence people from a hundred feet away.

Their claim of a benefit?  It may bring world peace.  Sometimes conflicts can't be resolved peacefully because the other person just won't shut up. France, we mean you.

The cultural implications go beyond the geopolitical. The number one cause for relationship violence, according to wife abusers?  "The bitch just wouldn't shut up".  Now, with the SpeechJammer, domestic discord disappears.



The device works by sending the speakers' own words back at them a few milliseconds apart. It is Delayed Auditory Feedback, which they say leads people to stutter.  So the SpeechJammer induces it. When people who do not stutter start to feel like they are stuttering, they stop talking.  It isn't painful, they say.


The digital delay IC output signals are fed to a direction sensitive microphone where they are used when the trigger is pressed.   This should revolutionize political campaigns - well, for the opposition anyway.

'SpeechJammer: A System Utilizing Artificial Speech Disturbance with Delayed Auditory Feedback' by Kazutaka Kurihara, Koji Tsukada, arXiv:1202.6106v1