BBC News has posted an article regarding the use of and subsequent outrage regarding high-pitched auditory devices that allow individuals to effectively disperse crowds of young people by playing tones which only young ears are consciously sensitive to.
From the article:
The devices, which exploit the fact that a person’s ability to hear high frequencies generally declines once they reach their 20s, have proved popular with councils and police who aim to tackle anti-social behaviour by using them to disperse groups of youths.
But a new campaign called “Buzz off”, led by the children’s commissioner for England and backed by groups including civil liberties group Liberty, is calling for them to be scrapped.
As with a few of the organizations outlined in the article, I believe that using these kinds of devices in public or private settings is patently wrong. It appears that our perspective on dealing with modern youth can be rather easily summed up as one of complete disinterest until the personal discomfort of the “mature” leads to annoyance. The fact that many of these devices are being used in commercial centers in the UK is laughable. Indeed, it is becoming more and more evident that our own “need” to consume in the peaceful confines of shopping malls, replete with painstakingly designed and tested advertisements saddled with complimentary muzak to create feelings of indifference towards our spending, has replaced our understanding of one of our foundational rights; that of our own cognitive liberty.
It strikes me that the concept of cognitive liberty, which I believe is the paramount philosophical creation of the human mind, is the liberty in which all other liberties swim with impunity. Without it as a foundation and breeding ground for thought, other liberties, such as free speech and the freedom of religion, become nothing more than good intentions bolstered by empty rhetoric. To subject another human without permission or warning to a sound with the intent of actively disrupting their thought process and, in some cases, causing them some deal of physical discomfort seems to be another sign of a potentially scary future. This seems especially true when the individuals utilizing these dispersion techniques are doing so out of concern for the material goods they’re peddling. The scary future exemplified by not only intentions of these kinds of devices, but by the lack of foresight of the men and women who bring them to the table as good solutions is something to take into great consideration as we continue to turn our understanding of the human body and technology against the people who will one day be asked to better it.