Interruptotron

In England people que up to get on busses, in India people pile on 7 at a time. In America we have tried to balance it out by encouraging a que-related literature cannon, while encouraging 7-at-a-time political debate.

Conversations in the US usually start with a burst of loud mutual stuttering until the stutter with the greatest volume and passion breaks through and becomes a well-ordered and queued- up statement that gradually loses emotional steam, eventually leaving room for the emergence of another stutter-fight. The result is attention deficit culture.

This makes it hard for Americans to read visual text silently (on the subway or in a crowded office for instance) because we are always regarding audio conversations as legitimate competitors for our attention, rather than background noise.

The "Interruptotron" is a text to speech application that reads digital text out loud using a synthesized voice, and modulates the volume according to background" audio input, so that if there is competing conversation, the Interruptotron will get louder and start to stutter until it is loudest against the background noise and then continue as if it had won the competition for attention.