Occupy Wall Street protestors are not allowed to “amplify sound” outdoors while protesting in New York City (NYC), but a new iPhone app could be used to get around the ‘megaphone’ ban that NYC has in place.
Since physical microphones are not allowed, people typically chant in unison to create the same effect. The Inhuman Microphone app for the iPhone has the potential to bring the art of protesting into the 21st century.
The Nation explains how an Occupy Wall Street chant typically works:
“Mic check?” someone implores.
“MIC CHECK!” the crowd shouts back, more or less in unison.
…
with every few words / WITH EVERY FEW WORDS!
repeated and amplified out loud / REPEATED AND AMPLIFIED OUT LOUD!
by what has been dubbed / BY WHAT HAS BEEN DUBBED!
the human microphone / THE HUMAN MICROPHONE!!! (jazz hands here).
While many protestors have taken to social networks like Facebook and Twitter to help organize protests, the core of these protests are still very non-digital.
An app by the name of Inhuman Microphone uses cellular networking to link a group of iPhones together and send the same phrases through each device’s speaker simultaneously. The end result: a very loud iPhone army of protestors.
Created by David Vella, Henrik Pettersson, Tom Leitch, and Tom Hannen, the app was demonstrated at the London Music Hack Day:
A group of Occupy Wall Street protestors could use the Inhuman Microphone app to create the same effect as a physical microphone without technically breaking New York City’s law on amplifying a certain sound in public during a protest. The app takes one user’s voice and sends that message into the cloud and onto a group of linked iPhones to be repeated at the same time. If each iPhone’s speaker is cranked all the way up, you’ve got some pretty decent decibels of volume on your hands.
You can ‘join’ the Inhuman Microphone app on its website, but you’ll only be added as a replayer. You can follow the project on Twitter for more developments.
We’re calling it in Apple’s next ad: “Need to protest? There’s an app for that.”
(via evolver.fm)
