sound as weapon
 

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/082704C.shtml

geez...........dont you love america?

Americans regularly tune out what they don't want to hear anyway.

but this system is supposed to transmit a normal speaking voice over a range of at least 4 blocks at a volume and with such directedness that the sound-image woudl resolve as if it was occurring within your head. that is not something americans can tune out. and this says nothing about the crowd control function.

good ole entrepreneurial spirit--anything can be made into a weapon...yay...

and this relates to music how????

since you didn't start the conversation... I'm going to...

Some people hate loud music. Some people hate certain kinds of loud music... I hate loud hip hop music that thumps from the back of some morons truck. Sure it's probably cool in some fashion, but I don't need to hear it in my car when my windows are up.

Thus, I added 14 speakers full mids, midbass, tweets, and 2 12" subs with 2 250 watt amps powering the full ranges and 2 250 amps powering the 12".

Whenever someone else would force me to listen to their hip hop crap... I switched on my system and played Barry Manilow... Looks like we made it...

my system easily output more sound then most peoples loud thumping annoyances.

Yeah, I caught that part. It also says you can move a few inches away and not be able to hear it. As for the sound resolving "inside one's head," that's what happens with headphones, and a lot of people voluntarily use them. I think people will get used to this just like every other technology that comes along. It's not exactly thought control or anything like that.

I hate any kind of loud music or noise that drowns out what I'm trying to listen to - or not listen to, for that matter. Sometimes I need complete silence to concentrate on what I'm doing. People are so self-centered nowadays, they assume everyone wants to hear their racket. My Mexican neighbors are like that with their tequila polka subwoofers in the parking lot every Friday and Saturday night. Fortunately the landlord is evicting everybody around me soon. Unfortunately, I don't expect their replacements to be any more civilized.

where you draw the line between music and noise?
it is not obvious--and noise is anything i dont like wont do as a response.
it is a serious question. you want to know what it has to do with music, think it out.

i dont see there is a coherent distinction. you record noise, you make it repeatable, which means you can either deduce or impose structure to it---there is no difference.

as for the twisting of audio technology into a weapon, well that seems like a beautiful example of how american capitalism operates.....

I'm inclined to agree with you philosophically - i.e., that capitalism perverts and corrupts everything it touches - but when you consider that the police also use more injurious technologies like rubber bullets, tear gas, and water cannon (water, the very elixir of life!) for crowd control, this seems like the least of several evils. Not to mention, ultrasonic technologies have been used as a "weapon" against insects and rodents for quite some time.

Good idea in theory, but as the end of the article says, the media applications sound very bad. If this catches on in a big way, could we have adverts that talk to you "in your head" as you walk past, the justification in the article seems to be that "if you don't want to hear it, you can move your head a half foot away and it will go away" but as with visual adverts now, i dont want to see any adversts, i certainly dont want people advertising in my head , even if localised to an area.

This could actually be useful for, say, putting "the voice of Allah" in religious fanatics' heads for the purpose of persuading them to disarm. Yeah, I know someone will raise a stink about the ethics of impersonating a deity or whatever, but would that be any worse than the clowns who put the idea into their heads that Allah wants them to kill the infidel or whatever?

I read the title of the topic, and for some reason I thought of Ricky Martin's "music" being used at high volume levels to torture people.

I don't make the distinction either, it is like saying what is art? You just posted a link and a quick byte about "don't you love america?" and the next post about but this system is supposed to transmit a normal speaking voice over a range of at least 4 blocks at a volume and with such directedness that the sound-image woudl resolve as if it was occurring within your head. that is not something americans can tune out. and this says nothing about the crowd control function." Which is why I asked, how YOU see it relates to music because what I see it doesn't.

The direction I see the discussion is more into the morals of sonically targeting advertisments, as far as the link itself discussing it's use for crowd control could easilly turn into a political discussion. I asked you for clarification because you were the thread starter and you have you own thoughts of how it fit. Had I not bothered to post, I would have just moved it to Politics or General discussion. As you can see other people mentioned the ability to speak as Allah into someone's head, thus had I crossed that path I would be inclined to move it to Philosophy.

Me thinking it out can come up with a VASTLY different place than were you would.

perhaps i misunderstood your post then, cyn....

i saw this as an interesting and somewhat alarming development of audio technology into a crowd control weapon. the americans have been using something like this for a while now--didnt they blast the vatican embassy in panama with high-volume madonna and other things 24/7 when noriega was in there?...

aaahh... yes, I see the path that you see now...I had completely forgoten about that and had you posted that in your initial thread I would have be reminded.

yes, they do things like that. I wasn't in the US when Noriega was ousted, but the Peruvian hostage situation I recall them doing just that, the Branch Davidian they did that...from what I recall it's more to create disorientation because you aren't allowing them to sleep or think over time. This seems to just cut out that time delay and pass the naseua on immediately.

This should be in Politics, shouldn't it?

When something is meant to be music, then it is a form of music. When something is not, then it is just noise. That's where the line is.

Bizarre.
Sound guns instead of bullet guns.

Maybe there's something to this...

Haha, I was in the city yesterday at the protest and I saw this thing. It was right by madison square garden and was mounted on a white hummer. I actually have a picture of the thing too.