122 reporting by Sandra Gutierrez, Marion Renault, and Donavyn Coffey / illustrations by Rami Niemi
I WISH SOMEONE
WOULD INVENT...
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accompanied by return postage. Microfi lm editions are available from Xerox University Microfi lms Serial Bid Coordinator, 300 N. Zeeb Rd., Ann Arbor, MI 48106.CLEARLY, WE COULD USE YOUR INVENTION IDEAS! TWEET @POPSCI, EMAIL [email protected], OR TELL US ON FACEBOOK.HEADPHONES THAT ALLOW BIKERS OR PEDESTRIANS
to hear selectively—say, only their music and useful traffic
sounds— are a commuter’s dream. The now- discontinued HereOne earbuds, released in 2017 by Doppler Labs, tried to do just that. Jacob
Meacham, a former VP at the company, says the primary challenge is building
a system that works quick enough; the earbuds would need to recognize an in-
coming sound and fi lter it out within a millisecond, or before your brain could
register it. Otherwise, you’d hear the change from noise to silence, which
would make you more aware of what you’re trying to remove. Other compa-
nies might succeed, but our ability to detect change will still be a challenge.
Snapchat filters, but for your voice
KATIE BELLOFF IN THE OFFICE
Tweaking your voice typically requires an
auto- tune dial, but that technology is neither
portable nor discreet. If you don’t want to carry a
mic and speaker around everywhere, surgery or
speech therapy is your best shot at changing your
tune (albeit more permanently). Altering the
length of your vocal cords can change your pitch,
but the operation is not always successful. Your
vocal signature— how you sound and are per-
ceived by others— is much more than just pitch,
says Jennifer Long, a laryngologist at the Univer-
sity of California at Los Angeles.Noise-selecting earbuds
SANDRA GUTIERREZ IN THE OFFICEPortable bathroom privacy
EVERYONE IN THE POPSCI OFFICE
It can be hard to relax in a public restroom with
every plop and splatter broadcast from stall to
stall. A material thin enough to make a portable
cone of silence wouldn’t be robust enough to trap
sounds, but there are other options. Japanese toi-
let manufacturer TOTO pioneered a feature called
Sound Princess, which plays a recording of flushing
water for 25 seconds, “for a bit of cover noise,” ex-
plains Bill Strang, president of corporate strategy
for TOTO USA. For now the feature is Japan only,
but it could expand to public restrooms stateside.