« 065: In The Beginning... | Main | 067: Dream Languages » February 01, 2004

066: Dream Machines

Japanese toymaker Takara have announced a dream machine -- a portable device which will allow you to influence your dreams by seeding it with some key phrases and words. During your slumber the Yumemi Kobo ("dream workshop") will whisper these words back to you (in your own pre-recorded voice, naturally) as well as drip some ambient music into your ear canals and frost your nasal passages with a fragrant scent. It's all very scientifically crafted to influence your dreaming mind and allow you to become suseptible to suggestion.

My son was born in the final hours of last year and I can't remember the last time I had a full night's sleep (actually, it was January 2nd and it was glorious). I would pay good money for a dream machine right now, but there are some interesting things to be discovered in sleep deprivation. My dreams aren't dreams so much as quicksand. The other night I was being suffocated by a bean bag chair. It's the first time that I have ever realized I was dreaming (only because we don't actually own a bean bag chair) and, because I was suffering, I forced myself to wake up in order to escape the smothering embrace of the bean chair. I remember working very hard to wake myself up and, once I had, I was even more exhausted than I had been a few hours earlier when I had laid down.

But I influenced my dream. I didn't need a dream machine; I didn't need some device whispering in my ear. "You are in Venice. The tide is high and the waters are lapping against the flagstones along the Grand Canal. You can smell the salt in the air." Whether it be through a hypnogogic state or through a direct neural interface, we can change the world, we can change OUR world.

And how different is our world from actual reality? Aldous Huxley in his seminal work The Doors of Perception talks about a Not-Self state, a state of perception outside the mental baggage of your own history and perceptive understanding where you perceive things as they truly are. Language, he believes, is a convenience that allows society to exist, but it is a pale reflection of the True Being of objects.

If we use language to influence our dreams, are we not then just reinforcing the reduced awareness which language inflicts on our perception? If we inject our dreams with words, are we not constraining the possibilities of flight?

Posted by Teppo at February 1, 2004 01:13 PM

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