Fred Wilson: Quirky and The Cone Of Silence

Noisy restaurants are no accident. Young people (who spend money) supposedly like places that feel "alive." Old people (who don't spend as much) hate noisy places and won't go. So, restaurants who want to fill up their tables on a Saturday night with young people drinking $12 martinis play loud music and avoid sound dampening decorations.

I'm not suggesting that the Cone of Silence wouldn't be a good thing -- I'd buy one! However, the way to attack the problem is social rather than technological. Imagine starting a grass-roots campaign to tell restaurant owners/managers that you hate how noisy their establishments are. Print stickers that say, "I wish this restaurant was more quiet" that could be stuck on credit card receipts so management would be forced to hear your message. There's no business model in this, though.

I know the 'wow' factor is greatly lessened but I wonder if two sets of in-ear headphones wouldn't solve this problem easily. 20dB+ of noise isolation is not uncommon and the addition of bluetooth (or even a physical tether) to pipe sound between people would make conversation simple.

If I could get over the feeling that it would look incredibly out of place at a bar or restaurant I would pursue the matter further.

The functionality could be implemented now with in-ear Bluetooth headsets. A small device with an array of mics would process and localize the 6 or so closest speakers and transmit the output via Bluetooth. One could also include some miss in the headsets to provide correlation data.

I highly doubt the cone-of-silence as he defines it is possible either. What's more interesting is the Quirky site/idea itself. Quirky is like http://www.halfbakery.com/ in action, so I guess it is fullbakery. I wonder why startups like that don't make it to HN. Do people not know about HN?

Even better if it has three modes:

  1.)  Everyone else seems silent to you
  2.)  You seem silent to everyone else
  3.)  Modes (1) and (2) simultaneously

I'm also curious whether Fred originally wanted (1) or (2) more [assuming (3) is not an option].

+1

Silence is the ultimate luxury right now, it needs to be democratized.