Everyone has, at one time or another, wished desperately for a real life mute button. Whether it’s a nagging partner or an annoying boss, sometimes life would just be easier if you could simply hit a button and make it all go away. Now, thanks to some clever Japanese researchers, you can!

A team of researchers in Japan recently created a device that will literally “jam” someone’s voice from a distance. What it actually does is record the offending party’s voice and then plays it back at them with a tiny delay of 200 milliseconds.

“We have to establish and obey rules for proper turn-taking,” write Kazutaka Kurihara and Koji Tsukada in their article on the SpeechJammer. “However, some people tend to lengthen their turns or deliberately disrupt other people when it is their turn … rather than achieve more fruitful discussions.”

The concept is based on the principle of delayed auditory feedback. Delayed auditory feedback (DAF) devices have long been used to assist stutterers to overcome their impediments, but if used on a non-stutterer the effect can be reversed.

“We utilized DAF to develop a device that can jam remote physically unimpaired people’s speech whether they want it or not,” write the researchers. “[The] device possesses one characteristic that is different from the usual medical DAF device; namely, the microphone and speaker are located distant from the target.”

The device is currently only in prototype phase, but I have no doubt that if it makes it to market there will be no shortage of buyers, even if it is just to irritate your mates.

[Source: Wired]