Yikes. Remind me to stay the hell away from Soho:
New Yorker Alison Wilson was walking down Prince Street in SoHo last week when she heard a woman’s voice right in her ear asking, “Who’s there? Who’s there?” She looked around to find no one in her immediate surroundings. Then the voice said, “It’s not your imagination.”
Indeed it isn’t. It’s an ad for “Paranormal State,” a ghost-themed series premiering on A&E this week. The billboard uses technology manufactured by Holosonic that transmits an “audio spotlight” from a rooftop speaker so that the sound is contained within your cranium. The technology, ideal for museums and libraries or environments that require a quiet atmosphere for isolated audio slideshows, has rarely been used on such a scale before. For random passersby and residents who have to walk unwittingly through the area where the voice will penetrate their inner peace, it’s another story.
Via Warren Ellis, who adds, “I’m starting to feel like sf writers such as myself should be running apologies on the inside front covers of our books.”
I think they are using a Parabolic Sound Reflector. These things work both ways too, allowing you to project or receive sound in one direction exclusively.
God, Ellis has an out of control ego on him, doesn’t he?
Pohl & Kornbluth beat “sf writers such as him” to this one by more than 50 years. And they probably weren’t the first.
Gee, I didn’t read that into it at all.
Just because it’s not a new idea doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.