KEY POINTS:
The news that scientists are on the verge of developing soundproof windows has to be the best thing since building regulations were revised to require new homes not to have rain running down the inside of walls.
The brainchild of German mechanical engineers, these windows use small ceramic patches to detect and block incoming sound. The only problem at the moment is that the patches aren't transparent, which is a bit of a drawback for a glazing material, but the boffins reckon that's a detail that they can easily sort out.
The profusion of infill housing now means that it is sometimes harder to hear yourself think than it is to hear your neighbour's kettle boiling. The national passion for spending the weekend lawnmowing, weedeating and waterblasting - not to mention modern music's reliance on filling-rattling electronically generated bass beats - has made city silence a commodity as prized and as rare as a parking spot.
The question arises, however, whether the tiles need to be designed to keep sound in, as well as out. In many societies around the world where people have lived cheek by jowl for centuries, they have learned to show greater consideration to the neighbours than is customary here. The Japanese house design standard used to have walls of paper, so people learned to keep their voices down. We have had no such training, and the national belief that we have a birthright entitlement to play everything from Celine Dion to Megadeth at a volume that would crack concrete now seems to be firmly entrenched.
So let's hope the soundproof windows don't just keep things quiet for the folk next door. Let them be designed to keep the noise where it belongs - with the noisy.