The Dream Recording Machine – “I had the strangest dream last night. Want to watch it?”

Within the next 30-40 years, we’ll have a machine that can record our dreams (and our realities) in HD, enabling us to watch those experiences and show them to others. The Japanese have begun doing precisely this. Eventually, the sophistication of this technology will allow us to participate in the dreams of others, enjoy customized dreams, and relive old experiences .

The Japanese, who usually dive into the future head first and with fewer apprehensions than their western counterparts, have already constructed a primitive dream recording machine, a video of which is attached below. The resolution of the image rendered by the first dream recording machine in the world is modest, but so were the first video games (Did anyone play FIFA 95?). Improving the picture quality is the logical next step in this process, and such advances tend to accelerate rapidly once the wheels are in motion.

You’ll be able to download the recording of your dream to your computer or portable device, and show it to your friends. I can hardly begin to fathom the endless possibilities of tapping into the hitherto untouched wisdom that clarity of dreams can unleash. For example, all the great ideas that came to you or someone else in a dream, but vanished long before sunrise, could be recovered.

Eventually, as nanobots become smaller and cheaper, and our knowledge of cognitive science is more complete, we’ll have the ability to directly manipulate the firing of certain neurons in certain parts of the brain by sending in billions of micrometer-size nanobots. In this manner we can recreate emotional states, sensations etc. We could generate, quite literally, a dream world.

This could entail, and is not limited to:

-          Customized dream scenarios. Imagine buying a dream designed by Pixar and written by Quentin Tarantino.

-          Participation in the dreams of others.

-          Reliving “wet” dreams, only this time with the ability to exert influence over your environment.

That’s just to mention some possibilities.

Recording reality

The invention of a dream recording machine is by extension also an invention of a reality recording machine: When we dream, our visual cortex is in vigorous activity, so we’re actually seeing images. A dream recording machine would monitor neural activity (i.e. everything that you perceive – whatever you see, hear, feel, smell, taste and think) regardless of whether you’re actually seeing it or just think you’re seeing it. So a dream machine that can display the graphic content of your dreams would also be able to display what you’ve seen in real life by monitoring the same neural activity.

This would open a great many doors, such as customized experiences in constructed worlds and reliving past events in our lives, complete with the same emotions, sensations and sights.

Michael Anissimov, of Singulairty Institute and AcceleratingFuture.com, brings up certain interesting points about the practical application of dream recording devices.

-          The ability to aggregate human dream data and for example see which people get which dreams and why.

-          The creation of a dream entertainment industry to cater to the growing demand for customized dreams. Imagine writers and designers creating dream experiences to sell to consumers.

-          Amusement parks based on dreams.

-          Dream celebrities, people who upload their dreams/lives online for all to see.

Michael also issues a slight warning of the possibility of a “delightful dream”:

 …so thoroughly enjoyable and amazing that it spreads across the world, and all humanity is consumed by it. From that point onward, we only develop our civilization for the purpose of maintaining this euphoric state, a local maxima in the fitness landscape of cultural progress and evolution. This might be a dream that involves direct stimulation of the pleasure center. (For this reason, it might be good to avoid building BCI devices that directly stimulate the pleasure center.) The “delightful dream” scenario would be considered a subset of wireheading. It might be more notorious, though, because while many people wouldn’t stick electrodes into their head just to stimulate their pleasure center, they might be willing to use a Dream Machine might, which could get them trapped in a wirehead when they otherwise would avoid it. 

According to Michael, this technology will be in place by 2050, and probably sooner.

 

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