Happiest Baby Einstein in the World

Liz and I have been playing this game of adding and crossing social trends with ubiquitous computing technologies to see where things can go. A couple of months ago, we were introduced (by new parent friends of ours) to the Happiest Baby on the Block book. One part of it is the idea that infants calm down when presented with a lot of white noise, because it's like the kind of sound they hear in the womb. You can even buy a CD of white noise that features 3 different white noise flavors:


This CD includes 3 tracks of calming white noise. First it is fast and vigorous to get a crying baby's attention. Then it is moderate to gradually guide your fussy baby to calm. Finally, it is rhythmic and womb-like to keep your infant calm and sleeping longer.

This led us to think, "well what about all of that Baby Einstein Mozart stuff? How does that fit in with this brave new world of infant audio?"

A brainstorming session on a drive led to some ideas. Here's one:

A baby-sized digital satellite (XM/Sirius) radio headphones that dynamically detects Baby's mental state (happy, crying, sleeping) based on simple noise level/audio processing and switch between XM radio stations designed to provide the appropriate sounds for the baby's internal state, anywhere on earth. A subscription model that takes the child's age into account can automatially switch between stations that are appropriate for the child's development level when selecting the right music, or special subscriptions can be made for kids who have sensory integration dysfunction, which is apparently also helped by listening to specific types of sounds.

No TrackBacks

TrackBack URL: http://orangecone.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/162

3 Comments

Did you see this?

Heh. I didn't say we were going to build it, but it's eminently doable (and perhaps desirable to a certain market, which is our point) using current technology.

Yikes. Will you be able to pick up your new Huxley-tech at the Ministry of Hatcheries and Conditioning?

Ads

Archives

ThingM

A device studio that lives at the intersections of ubiquitous computing, ambient intelligence, industrial design and materials science.

The Smart Furniture Manifesto

Giant poster, suitable for framing! (300K PDF)
Full text and explanation

Recent Photos (from Flickr)

Smart Things: Ubiquitous Computing User Experience Design

By me!
ISBN: 0123748992
Published in September 2010
Available from Amazon

Observing the User Experience: a practitioner's guide to user research

By me!
ISBN: 1558609237
Published April 2003
Available from Amazon

Recent Comments

  • Kristina B: Did you see this? read more
  • Mike: Heh. I didn't say we were going to build it, read more
  • Steve Portigal: Yikes. Will you be able to pick up your new read more

About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by Mike Kuniavsky published on July 20, 2005 1:16 PM.

Projections into the world was the previous entry in this blog.

My essay in Chinese is the next entry in this blog.

Find recent content on the main index or look in the archives to find all content.