What If We Could Record Our Dreams?
Would you do it?
Now and then, I wake up from a super vivid dream that spurs me into writing everything I remember about it in my dream journal. They are usually pretty wild, sometimes even incredibly dark, and I only ever share them with my best friend if they could have some semblance of symbolism to them.
Recently though, I came across this old article that explores promising technology developed by Japanese scientists that claim to be able to ‘record’ a person’s dream (with an approximate 60% success rate), for them to watch back when they are awake. Then after some further digging, I found a follow-up article from 2018 that shows interest in this is still ongoing.
How much could we learn from being able to interpret our subconscious mind visually? Or is this something that would be better left alone? Also, the marketer in me can already drum up images of a future where our dreams become subject to a capitalist agenda, “skip ad in 5…4…3…”.
I believe it would also open up a whole new world of data privacy issues, where would the dreams be stored? Who would have the rights to the dream movie, the dreamer, or the producer of the recording? What if they portrayed negative social behaviours, like murder or terrorism, would they be reported?
All these questions notwithstanding, I would still be curious enough to try it at least. Being a reflective person, I would likely find being able to reflect on the images in my subconscious quite a riveting experience. Though I can also imagine myself becoming quite obsessive about it, so I certainly wouldn’t buy into something like this.
But if this kind of technology became commercially viable, would you do it?
