That's actually been done, although no lasers were involved. You can modulate an ultrasonic beam with an audible sound in such a way that someone hit by the beam will hear the audible sound. Ultrasonic beams can be focused into a fairly narrow region. See [1].
They used this in an ad in New York in 2007 for the TV series "Paranormal State", which was premiering soon on A&E. It was a paranormal themed reality show. They had a big billboard for the series on the side of a building, and Holosonic's "audio spotlight" technology on the roof that sent two beams of modulated ultrasound down to the sidewalk.
Pedestrians who walked directly into the beams would hear a disembodied voice whispering creepy things like "Who's there? It's not your imagination", but someone next to them who didn't enter the beam would hear nothing. Here's a video [2].
Here's an article about that ad campaign, and it also mentions some other ad uses of the technology [3]. Interesting quote from it:
> Joe Pompei, president and founder of Holosonics, said the creepy approach is key to drawing attention to A&E's show. But, he noted, the technology was designed to avoid adding to noise pollution. "If you really want to annoy a lot of people, a loudspeaker is the best way to do it," he said. "If you set up a loudspeaker on the top of a building, everybody's going to hear that noise. But if you're only directing that sound to a specific viewer, you're never going to hear a neighbor complaint from street vendors or pedestrians. The whole idea is to spare other people."
Hopefully the ad tech uses the lower-acoustic-clarity method mentioned. It'll be like bus driver announcement white noise. "Wah, wah. And if you wah wah wah, visit wah wah wah dot com today."
Edit: I also wonder how it works if you modulate or otherwise moderate the interface between ear surfaces and ear-surroundings moisture, since that's apparently the resource this method needs in order to work at all. Shopping with headphones on can be a pretty nice experience IMO, and maybe it doubles as a countermeasure.
Yep, this is going to be Altered Carbon or Ghost In The Shell type of crap. Whatever you Google for will follow you everywhere, and nag you until you buy it...
Well, now you can directly target people so personalized ads when you're walking down the street. I'm scared it would devolve to pseudo-hallucinations ('did you hear that?').
They used this in an ad in New York in 2007 for the TV series "Paranormal State", which was premiering soon on A&E. It was a paranormal themed reality show. They had a big billboard for the series on the side of a building, and Holosonic's "audio spotlight" technology on the roof that sent two beams of modulated ultrasound down to the sidewalk.
Pedestrians who walked directly into the beams would hear a disembodied voice whispering creepy things like "Who's there? It's not your imagination", but someone next to them who didn't enter the beam would hear nothing. Here's a video [2].
Here's an article about that ad campaign, and it also mentions some other ad uses of the technology [3]. Interesting quote from it:
> Joe Pompei, president and founder of Holosonics, said the creepy approach is key to drawing attention to A&E's show. But, he noted, the technology was designed to avoid adding to noise pollution. "If you really want to annoy a lot of people, a loudspeaker is the best way to do it," he said. "If you set up a loudspeaker on the top of a building, everybody's going to hear that noise. But if you're only directing that sound to a specific viewer, you're never going to hear a neighbor complaint from street vendors or pedestrians. The whole idea is to spare other people."
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_from_ultrasound
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwAeb3RBZ1Y
[3] https://adage.com/article/news/hear-voices-ad/122491/