Dream machine?

[kingp]

This comes from a dream I had last week. In this dream I had a machine (which my mind called "Public Record") which sat in one's bedroom and had the ability to read your dreams as you slept from the electrical pulses traveling along your synapses. In effect, it took your brain waves, and converted the waves into digital code, which could then be burned onto CD's or uploaded to your computer or web site. Actually, I think the technology is probably around today which would enable one to create such a machine in the not too distant future. This leads me to a question.....
If such a machine were available, would you buy one so you could store your dreams and possibly pop one into your CD drive and watch over again and maybe save forever?

Do you think a beautiful dreamer could become a sort of celebrity simply by having more interesting dreams? Talk about the ultimate movie!! Probably quite low in plot structure though.
It would end the question as to who dreams in color and who dreams in black and white.

Would you have the nerve to post any of your dreams for others to share and experience, or would it be too personal?
Would dreams fall under "intellectual property" and be copywrited?
If you dream about making love at a McDonalds and post it, can McDonalds sue you for damaging their image?

Just wanted to get some ideas on this.....

 

[lk70]

If you dream about making love at a McDonalds and post it, can McDonalds sue you for damaging their image?

Just wanted to get some ideas on this.....

ROFLMAO.

I suspect it would lead to burger wars like we've never seen before.

"Home of the Whopper" indeed.

 

[kingp]

Burger King

LOL LK...You can have the King. Me? I think I'll head to Wendy's.

"Bad Joke Alert!!!"

"The Federal Government has activated the Bad Joke Alert. Had this been an actual joke you would be laughing by now."

 

[DannyMc]

The machine sounds like a good idea , seeing how many dreams we forget . When I was young I remember a couple of nightmares I woke up from caused me to lose my voice , When your trying to talk or scream and just nothing comes out .

 

[storyteller]

...If such a machine were available, would you buy one so you could store your dreams and possibly pop one into your CD drive and watch over again and maybe save forever?
...It would end the question as to who dreams in color and who dreams in black and white.

Because I remember so few dreams, I wouldn't mind just finding out whether I had actually dreamed during whatever hours I managed to sleep.

I wonder what effect our memory would have on the color aspect. The few dreams I remember, I usually remember in color. Wonder too how sound would play in. Again, the few dreams I remember include dialog. Sometimes music. Like the other day, not a clue what I'd been dreaming about, but my cat pounced, woke me up, and as I started my day, I found I was humming the "Theme from the Pink Panther." That music was stuck in my head ALL day! I wouldn't mind knowing why, especially considering that I haven't heard it in years.

storyteller

 

[Tick L]

This would be an awesome machine and I would definitely have one. I tend to dream and only remember bits and pieces of them, and never usually the whole thing, and it would just be cool to watch your dreams from start to finish, and just try and figure out why the hell you were dreaming what you were dreaming.

 

[Redmage]

Fascinating idea. There's several stories buried in there.

 

[Capnmad]

I actually once thought of a similar premise... I considered it for maybe later development into a TV series (tentatively called "DreamWriters") or something, if I ever had the power and writing expertise to see it through... I even had the machine components designed and named... The first was "Seminal Image Generator M(something) Underlying Networking Dream Database" or some crap... The acronym was a hamfisted nod to Freud (SIGMUNDD -- I was playing with the idea in my late teens), the second unit whose name escapes me, tied the imagery from SIGMUNDD together into a loose symbolic narrative (or can be overridden by human dreamwriters doing "custom" jobs), and then the whole program/dream goes through the LAW unit, or "Legal Analysis Window", to make sure that neither the elements nor their interrelationships would cross any legal barriers... If so, the dream was rerouted back through the system for debugging.

The premise opens a lot of questions -- most obviously, the issue of censorship because of the LAW unit, but also others like advertising as someone mentioned, and many more... My pilot plot was going to bloom into a legal case where the use of a peripheral allowed interactivity between dreamers, and there was a divorce suit stemming from dream infidelity... Two people were having an "affair" on the dream plane, with all the realism, all the beauty and all the physical sensation that dreams can produce, but with none of the technical real-world "touching"... Would that then constitute infidelity, or is it fantasy escape, like some use phone sex?

Many, many questions to answer as technology catches up. But fear not, we're not nearly there yet... Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (a variation on which would likely be the basis for such a machine) is still in it's infancy, and a blunt tool, at best.

 

[Senbab]

I recently had a dream that was so powerful and amazing, I wrote about it in a short story and plan on making it into a movie. Id love to have the dream still recored as a refrence, though.

 

[gabrielle]

great idea. i'd go get myself such a machine immediately. I love analyzing my dreams - this psychological side in me - I hate it, when I don't remember anything I dreamt in the morning. then sometimes I do remember quite in detail, but it keeps slipping away within a few hours. It would be fantastic to have the opportunity to record and store my dreams.

gabrielle

 

[Mostly Harmless]

Recording, uploading on a website... ummm...
just think about the viruses!