You know what weirds me out?
It weirds me out when my dog or niece or random creatures with no language capacity know when I’m nervous. My niece cries when I’m anxious and my dog sighs when I sigh. Or – how about this craziness I never talk about – how empty plastic bottles in the other room all start popping when I try to cure that nervousness with some deep-breathing and get really calm. All these little phenomena are things I’d been ignoring and filed under my “better not share these tidbits with the rest of the class” files of the batshit cabinet. But, science says, there might be more to this than meets the sci-fi eye.
Indeed, vibrations – whether they come from a guitar or your pumping heart – carry info. What happens, is that with movement, all the bouncing molecules in the room get thrown off their own flow. Sounds or other resonating objects hit the air molecules, which wave out to bounce off everything from your bag of snacks to your wank station kleenex box. Everything in the room gets changed. Which means the objects now have the vibe-info passed on to them and that the source’s info can be recovered. Even if you can’t see or hear the source, you can observe the tuning fork style action happening to something like a soda can – and work backwards from there.
If you have the technology.
Over at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), researchers got a posse of other geek gangsters at Microsoft and Adobe and subsequently developed a way to recreate sounds – using only video footage of objects serving as the microphone themselves. Like, whatever sound’s been muted, they can look at it on film and figure it out by watching how the ambient molecules are pinging off inanimate shiz.
In this way, I can press the brakes on my perceived spiral from insanity-beta upgrading to going down the straightjacket rabbit hole. Mayhaps I’m not so cray, after all. It’s weird when hippie idioms like “change your frequency” make scientific sense, but if I’m calm, my heart beats totes differently than when Firefox freezes up and deletes an entire article I’d just edited and was too stupid to press “Save Draft” on. So if I suddenly get fed a spontaneous slice of Zen after a rage binge (bipolar, I think they call it), why wouldn’t my perceptive pet notice? Why wouldn’t changed wave-vibes from my a slower heart rate and calmer breath alter plastic pressure? (Come on, TEDTalks, back me up, here). And as for technology detection, that vibrational variation could just be significant enough to eventually (if they’re not already doing it) yardstick via visual microphone (like the existing “laser listening” devices the Guardian’s already being told they could be victim of).
But, as I know you all look up to me for solutions, I won’t disappoint you. So, today I’m consulting the classics to rectify any potential blood-pumper espionage. The answer is that we need only network and befriend some serene, centered, and spiritual people with a world view of unity and peace. Invite them over! Share a nice communal dinner with laughter and levity! Speak of hopes and dreams for the planet.
And then rip out their hearts.
And plant them under the floorboards of your home.
Obviously.
♪“Goo-oo-oood. Good vibrations…”
(See? Told you the classics had an answer).
It’ll be the cardiac tin foil hat version for thwarting NSA heart hacking attempts as their signals get jumbled. Or, if you’re a nervous person like me, maybe all the calm ones will cancel out your own anxiety waves. Just like the time I covered myself in zombie guts to avoid getting eaten while I bravely ventured out for more supplies.
Legit concern:
Will this brilliant plan turn my dog schizophrenic?
#pry-orities