These unlikely headphones were created by designer Yoosang Kim. As some might remember, there was an erroneous internet factoid making the rounds a while back: using in-ear headphones for an hour will cause bacteria in your ear to multiply by a factor of 700, making ear infections all but a certainty. As it turns out, that number was misquoted and in-ear headphones aren't really that dangerous. In any case, Kim made these headphones so your music is more antiseptic.
First of all, yes they do look neat, and we think the clasp-behind-the-neck design is an interesting way to keep your ear buds in check when they're not in use. We can see these things being used, assuming there's some really, really fancy active cancellation involved. You'd need something to cancel out the incoming sounds and, so as to not be a jerk to those around you, some active cancellation blasting the sounds leaking out. You'd need some ridiculously good engineers, and you probably wouldn't be able to implement the technology in such a small set of in-ears right off the bat, but somewhere down the line this design might see the light of day -- in theory at least.
Practically speaking, how can you mass-market a set of in-ears that have no customization? We could understand if they were on-ear or over-ear, because those designs allow you to build big and typically those headphones have extendable bands. These things are just metal loops; what's to prevent them from falling out of some people's ears or being too big for others?
[Yanko Design via Gizmodo] |
