"Japanese researchers have created a hand-held gun... that can jam the words of speakers who are more than 30 meters... away."

"... At its most basic, this gun could be used in libraries and other quiet spaces to stop people from speaking — but its second application is a lot more chilling."

The researchers were looking for a way to stop “louder, stronger” voices from saying more than their fair share in conversation. The paper reads: “We have to establish and obey rules for proper turn-taking when speaking. However, some people tend to lengthen their turns or deliberately interrupt other people when it is their turn in order to establish their presence rather than achieve more fruitful discussions.  Furthermore, some people tend to jeer at speakers to invalidate their speech.” In other words, this speech-jamming gun was built to enforce “proper” conversations....

Admit it: You just thought of somebody you know. Oh, it's chilling all right. And yet....

At a political rally, an audience member could completely lock down Santorum, Romney, Paul, or Obama from speaking. On the flip side, a totalitarian state could point the speech jammers at the audience to shut them up. Likewise, when a celebrity or public figure appears on a live TV show, his contract could read “the audience must be silenced with speech jammers.”

Once you silence the crowd, what do you want them for?
Why go out at all? Now, as you know, I actually think the President should never leave the White House. But if they're not going to take my advice, and they decide to go and do the big cult-of-personality thing, they're going to want to hear that crowd noise. But the speech jammer might be laser-focused on an individual heckler. It's a much nicer image — as long as we're aiming guns — than don't tase me, bro.

Then there’s Harrison Bergeron, one of my favorite short stories by Kurt Vonnegut.

Ha. I thought of Harrison Bergeron too. (If you want to read it, it's in "Welcome to the Monkey House."

THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.

Some things about living still weren’t quite right, though. April, for instance, still drove people crazy by not being springtime. And it was in that clammy month that the H-G men took George and Hazel Bergeron’s fourteen-year-old son, Harrison, away.

It was tragic, all right, but George and Hazel couldn’t think about it very hard. Hazel had a perfectly average intelligence, which meant she couldn’t think about anything except in short bursts. And George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.

Read the whole thing! Or hang out here and talk about speech jammers and other ways we might create a better, fairer world.