For today's edition of the NPR program "Day to Day," I report on a new technology that can protect conversations in small, otherwise public places from eavesdroppers. It's called Babble, and was developed with Herman Miller by Applied Minds, a crazy-cool R&D firm in Burbank founded by former Disney Imagineers Bran Ferren and Danny Hillis. The Babble device samples and repeats back random bits of sound it hears, effectively creating an invisible, virtual wall of encrypted sound. So if you're sitting at your desk talking on the phone or collaborating with a co-worker, you can understand each other just fine. But just a few steps away, your conversation becomes an unintelligible yet familiar murmur to anyone else passing by.
Link to "Day to Day" home, Link to "Talk Freely Behind the Fortress of Babble" segment. Archived audio will be online after 12pm PT today.
Link to Sonare Technologies, the new Herman Miller subsidiary that developed the gadget with Applied Minds.
Previously on Boing Boing: No Privacy in Your Cubicle? Try an Electronic Silencer
