From Bone to Brain: A New Way of Hearing Sound Bone conduction technology offers an alternative to using a cell phone.
While Beethoven was completely deaf in the last ten years of his life, he composed some of his greatest music during this time. He wrote five piano sonatas, five string quartets, the Missa Solemnis, and his most famous Ninth Symphony. As he experimented with his notes, he held a rod between his teeth and rested its other end on his piano. Somehow, this gave him another way to hear aside from using his eardrum.
Today’s modern otologists now know that the rod was likely placed somewhere near his cheekbone, which vibrates to sound very easily. Studies have shown that any sound placed next to the cheekbone will vibrate through nearby bones and reach the cochlea, an organ that signals sound to the brain. Normally, sound reaches the cochlea through our ear canal. However, the cochlea is blocked by the eardrum. If the eardrum doesn’t function properly, then you can’t hear. This eardrum is why many medical experts believe Beethoven went deaf, and he could only hear after using a rod to bypass it.
Source: Bone Conduction: How it Works
Doctors now use bone conduction vibration to develop hearing aids for their patients, but Imrich Valach - the CEO of a relatively new company called Sentien - takes it a step further. He’s studying the health effects of using your smartphone to listen to music. “Think of how much time and attention a smartphone eats up every time you use it,” he writes. “It demands that you focus both your visual and haptic senses on the interaction.” While using your phone, you may get distracted by another app. Some services have “teams of thousands of people whose sole task is to make you spend time on the app or device. When you get home, tired from work, it’s hard to resist the temptation to get that dopamine spike that makes us feel better.”
Sentien’s CEO believes that this type of technology should not influence our lives. One of his values is that “[t]ech should disappear from our attention by blending into the environment.” We are like “cyborgs'' to the point where “[c]omputers are an extension of us and should help free us from mundane tasks without taking up our attention.” Without technology’s addictive element, it can promote productive and healthy behaviors.
What if there was a way to access your phone without actually touching it? Sentien has created a new bone conduction headset to do just that. The device’s functionality is similar to that of a phone, but it won’t give you a dopamine spike. You can configure the headset using the Sentien Connect app. After that, you can use its voice assistant to get information, make phone calls, and listen to music from anywhere.
Anyone can use this headset, including the deaf. Because it transfers noise through the bones and not the eardrum, users can still hear what is going on in their surrounding environment. Joggers, swimmers, and drivers who are addicted to their phones may find this headset incredibly useful in breaking their habits. For the first time, you can swim while listening to your favorite music. Joggers also don’t have to worry about keeping a wire in their ears as they run, which causes ear fatigue.
Unlike traditional earbuds and headphones, Sentien is designed to prevent sound leakage and provides a personalized listening experience. You can wear it with a helmet or hat without anyone noticing the headset. Users who tried Sentien’s headset say it’s “very comfortable,” and some of them even forgot they were wearing it.
You can learn more about Sentien here:
Sentien Audio | Merge Realities at the Speed of Sound
Sentien Audio - Your New Superpower. | Indiegogo
Raine Magazine had the opportunity to interview Imrich on his groundbreaking project. Before our interview, Sentien Support referred us to an article written by the CEO about human-computer interaction. You don’t need to read it to understand the questions, but it helps.
Article: The Story of Sentien: How a Research Project Became a Company
Developing tech can be challenging for beginners. How did you go about learning what you needed to know to make the headset?
“The core question was: Who is the team and the person who could deliver such a product? Human-computer interaction is a complex field consisting of both natural and social sciences. I listed those fields and found experts and the resources they suggested
. For example, I took the Introduction to Computer Science CS50 Harvard course to understand how computers communicate and even enrolled in a science-fiction & media university course to see how people envisioned the future and what (unintended) problems it can create.
I also studied works on human-computer interaction from the likes of Licklider, Englebart, or Weiser so as not to reinvent the wheel—or even learn what the wheel is in this case. The ideas are not new and they are not yet materialized due to a lack of technological progress.
In addition, I studied resources on design, electronics, and manufacturing. The goal was not to do all these tasks but to have a general overview of how these fields work. The most important part was meeting experts from each field and learning or working with them.”
If you could give yourself advice 5 years ago, knowing what you know now, what would it be?
“This is tricky, as hindsight bias is strong. I’d say “A pandemic is about to happen :) Push for prototyping with production components, and socialize.”
What is your most memorable experience from designing the headset and why?
“There are so many—each test of a new prototype was a rollercoaster ride. The first beep of the headset, the first sound played after months of work, each ergonomic prototype. And most importantly, sharing the moments with the team in anticipation. Both the good and the bad.
Sometimes there were weeks of work and the headset just did not turn on—and with no error message. So you test everything, measure voltage on connections, draw diagrams to single out a variable that is problematic... It is a grueling process, but once it works, the feeling is great.”
Marketing is something that many engineers struggle with. You’ve led a very successful media campaign. Describe what went into the marketing of the headset.
“First and foremost, we are excited about this whole field and are creating devices and software that we want to use ourselves. And we assume there are other people like us, so we want to find them and share what we built as we love the experience.
Marketing is almost a derogatory term in engineering circles and sometimes rightly so if the communication is in bad faith. But it is not the rule and does not need to be that way. If you care about a problem or want to provide a new experience and you create a solution and act in good faith, it’s essential to let others know, get their feedback, improve the product, and provide them with a new option.
To get into all details of how the campaign went, it’s highly specific for the product, but the core is: create a page / decide on the communication, share it with others, ask them what they think, find out whether it communicates clearly, and iterate.
Listen to people to learn what they find valuable, and tailor the communication for the people you want to communicate to. Video, photo, text, banners, this does not really matter; all the details are a function of your product and your target audience. In general, “Show, don’t tell” is a good principle.”
What are you most excited about regarding your upcoming projects?
“There are so many opportunities and ideas. We have the opposite problem—picking what we want to work on :) For now, we are writing all ideas in a huge doc and focusing on shipping Sentien Audio and Sentien Connect app.”
What existing technologies does Sentien Audio allow consumers to replace?
“Any device that one uses for audio communication: earbuds, headphones, and even smart speakers. Sentien Audio is location and context independent. Put Sentien Audio on in the morning and forget about wearing it. Like your wristwatch.”
In the recap section of an article you wrote (see above), you say, “Tech should disappear from our attention by blending into the environment.” However, it seems as though tech only continues to grab our attention (example: social media). Can you explain what allows certain technologies to be addictive, while other technologies are not as addictive?
“The old truism—“technology” is just that—a tool that we decide how to use. For some products, there are teams of thousands of people whose sole task is to make you spend time on the app or device. When you get home, tired from work, it’s hard to resist the temptation to get that dopamine spike that makes us feel better.
There are many books and articles written on this topic. The core [principal] is that in that moment, it’s what we want. Using these apps and devices is what we choose. Obviously, these technologies are not evil per se, but we just cannot handle them. Many people opt out of using them as a rule of thumb—me included. It’s a defensive step, I could not control the balance between quality content and content that just gave me dopamine spikes.
The issue is in the long term, if the substance is missing. I often hear an argument that this is how people rest. From my experience, it was not resting, but making me numb since my brain was in overdrive, in a weird delirium almost, like eating spoonfuls of sugar. Probably this is wishful thinking to a degree, but you get the point
. The larger issue I see is that it is very easy to be fed crooked information about the world and to create false models of reality. And we are just not good at determining and checking whether each fact is true or not. It takes an insane amount of energy and effort. Recently I found out it even has a name—Brandolini’s law— the amount of time needed to debunk wrong information is greater than producing it.
To summarize it, (1) we want to do it as we feel good while doing it, and (2) there is a large probability of empty or superfluous or just plain wrong information. Sounds like the perfect storm.
However, not all is doom and gloom—I love the internet and technology. There is an incredible amount of information and tools that make our lives easier.
So I believe it is easier to moderate the inputs than getting exposed to them and fighting them on the spot. I like to think of it as having a shopping list while going to a grocery store hungry.
The core of any device and software we make at Sentien is to keep these mechanics in mind and make sure we promote productive, healthy habits and behaviors. Or at the very basic level, to provide tools for those who want to focus on what matters.”
Building off the previous question, I want to ask about another point in the same article. It says you believe that humans are “cyborgs” because of the way people interact with technology. How cybernetic are humans currently?
“I don’t think there is any absolute scale of cybernetics. We are as cybernetic as we have ever been. I can think of food and it arrives at my doorstep in half an hour. It just takes interacting with a device I always have on me.
Or I want to talk with someone, so I say “Call” and the name and I talk with them. I can port to an illusion of ancient Greece or explore the world from my living room. Open up the crystal ball and get an estimate of the distance and time needed to get anywhere in the world. Tap and fly.
These distances between wanting something and getting it done are getting shorter. And that’s what we have always been doing and continue to do. We can and should think long and hard and be perceptive of changes and understand each other to make the best choices and create the best future we can.”
How will humans interact with technology ten years into the future? What makes you so certain about your prediction?
“My only prediction is that people will follow their wants and needs through a path of least resistance, and technology will get smaller and more powerful. We are creating tools that aid you in this process and try to empower you.”
Building off the previous question, how could Sentien Audio influence this trend? “Earbuds, headphones, and smart speakers are largely affected since the technology was not there yet. From our experience, having the interface always available provides more utility and more of what we call a ‘seamless interaction.’ The transaction costs are lowered. We think this will improve both communication and focus on what matters for each person.”
How should humans interact with technology?
“The only “should '' in this context is to understand ourselves and others, and most importantly not to fool ourselves—as we are the easiest people to fool. I think no one does anything that he believes in the moment to be a bad choice. Then it is a question of what future we want to see.”
