Bring the Noise (Algorithm)

A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder explains that a little disorder is often more beneficial than organization -- and while we know this to be true in many systems, from evolution to business -- for many people, it's hard to accept this in day to day life . . . we think we need to be more organized, and rarely compute the cost/ benefit analysis of getting organized, and feel guilt over our messiness . . . but sometimes, when things get to clean, we need to manufacture messiness: once cell phone technology got sophisticated enough to filter out all background noise (something engineers loved, because it enabled less transmission of information, and therefore longer battery life and greater channel capacity) the phone companies ended up having to create a mathematical technique (e.g G.711.II) to add"comfort noise" and they had to do this for three reasons

1) when background noise is removed you can hear faint voice echoes, which is unnerving;

2) background noise indicates that the call is still happening, otherwise, whenever there is a pause in the conversation, it sounds as if the other person hung up;

3) at an unconscious level, we desire background noise and the absence of it is disorienting . . . "our brains rebel at the unnatural neatness."