Get away … No, listen up …
From the New York Times, a funny story about an invented teen repellant noise turned adult-evading ringtone for the cell phone. Talk about unintended consequences …
The story includes a link to an mp3 file of the ringtone in question. I, for one, can’t hear it. But then, I’ve been deaf in one ear my whole life, and even the one that works has some deficits. Can you here it? If so, how do you describe it?
I haven’t read the article, so I apoligize for redundancy.
There are fine “hairs” (stereocilia) on your ear drum (cochlea). These hairs are excited by sound. That is hearing. The cochlea (when uncoiled) is like a strip, and there are high frequency hairs on the right, and low frequency hairs on the left. These hairs die from right to left. They die because of abuse or disease.
As such, these hairs die over time. That is why this sound cannot be heard by adults, but by children. Adults have lost much of the hairs on the right side of the strip.
At 30 I can hear this noise. It sounds like a really, really high pitched test tone. It doesn’t change at all; the tone is a constant pitch and sound level. Pretty boring.
Comment by Matt — June 12, 2006 @ 8:01 am
Hard physiological proof of my stunted development. I can hear it too.
Comment by MT — June 12, 2006 @ 8:21 am
I’m surprised that after all the time I spent in front of speaker stacks at local punk clubs in the early ’90s, I too can hear the tone. And I just turned 40.
Comment by Jim Hilsenteger — June 12, 2006 @ 10:02 am
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