Did you know that mountain bikes were invented by kids who wanted to ride downhill on their bikes? When their regular bikes broke, they started making modifications to the frame, brakes and using trial bike tyres for the wheels to create sturdier bikes. Call that a shining example of user-led innovation.
What about sending text-messages on your mobile phone (sorry! cell phone if you are in the States..). This function was apparently included in the early day phones as a mechanism to let engineers test mobile base stations and antennae and as a means of sending quick-fix software patches around. No doubt anyone turning up at one of the big networks' headquarters would not have been taken seriously if they had proclaimed that this little piece of functionality will herald the dawn of a new form of communication pioneered by young people, leading to an entirely new kind of 'language' - txting?
Recently newspapers have run the story about the Mosquito ring tone, a high-pitch ring tone kids have been programming their mobiles to use during class - but inaudible to the teacher. How's that for framing a problem and designing a solution around it? Are you too old to hear it? Try it! Alec Saunders Log offers not only links to the original NY times article, but also to the NCH Tone Generator application. This is used by audio engineers to generate various different kinds of tones ranging from square waves to pink noise to sine waves, and a bunch more. Alec has generated a host of tones in different frequencies, all of which I can hear too apart from the 18khz one. What about you - are you too old to hear them?
my friend just showed me this and we all heard it...so we got my parents in the room, 50 and 48, and they both didnt here a thing. they thought we were messin with them..it was real funny
Posted by: matt | July 21, 2006 at 21:39
I'm 50 and I could hear it but it was totally annoying. AND it chased my dog out of the room.
Posted by: bc | July 09, 2006 at 17:53
I could hear it (age 43), but I had to turn up the speakers quite a bit.
Posted by: pam | July 08, 2006 at 13:26
i could hear a very high pitched noise in the background - irritating. I'm 42 but had ear damage from working in freezers lol so its anyone's guess why i hear it.
but it would be enough to make me leave in a very short rush indeed.
Posted by: nortypig | July 03, 2006 at 23:49
Well i'm going to be 24 soon, I can hear those tones as well. Major pain for my ears though. Ugh. Oh! how time flies..
Posted by: Someone | July 03, 2006 at 19:33
I will be 27 in September, and my wife turned 26 last week. I just played this a moment ago with my laptop speakers on and she could hear it. I thought it was a joke because I couldn't hear a thing.
I could only hear it when I plugged headphones in and cranked the volume, and then it was overly irritating.
Posted by: eric bostrom | July 03, 2006 at 00:24