October 25, 2003 23:09 | Confession / Culture / Technology / WebBlogging

Semi-conscious

In Joi's posting today, he quips:

I remember thinking in the dream, "oh, I should blog this... "

Judging from the comments, some folks find this strange and funny. I don't find it either. I think it's perfectly natural. Whenever you become fluent in any language/medium or exposed to them a lot, it is perfectly normal for the mind to start using the frameworks of said language/medium in its thought process, dreams included.

Cases in point: I find myself very often, many times a day in fact, composing blog entries in my head. Usually in a moment of recline, when relaxing or napping, drifting off into a semi-conscious state. I'll think about something and immediately switch into "blog voice". Sadly 99% of them never get written. (Hence once of the many reasons for my strong desire for a direct brain interface to my Mac, but I digress...)

A few years ago, after a particularly frenzied all day HTML <table>-layout coding session, I found myself having an extremely emotional dream.. all in HTML.

Have you never had characters and scenarios from a movie just watched that evening appear in your dreams that night?

This is somewhat off-point from what Joi said, but it is related. The fact that he can consciously in his dream *think* "I should blog this" is very telling as well. I've heard many times that keeping a journal of ones dreams is a great way to gain control of them, by extension control of one's mind and further of one's life.

Trick number one: in your next dream, make a conscious effort to look at your hands.

Comments
Sun, Oct 26, 2003, @ 23:37
1- Quan

Just like you, I also often start composing blog entries in my head but unfortunately never publish them. In fact, this phenomena also applies to comments.

When I started blogging, I thought having this meta-discourse, this story-telling voice was the most bizarre experience. It felt as though some stranger had taken over my mind. The experience was not unlike when I first started thinking in English when I arrived in cegep.

Fortunately, I've learned to deal with this mishmash of characters in my head, so the French, English and blogging voice get along just fine now.

PS: reading my comment, it sounds as though I am schizophrenic or something... But I tell you, I'm not... don't worry Quan, you're not.


Mon, Oct 27, 2003, @ 17:51
2- aj

I played Rez on PS2 (ultra-hypnotic, Tron-like trance music rail-shooter) before going to bed, and dreamed all night that I was flying through weird wireframe worlds not dissimilar from those early-80s TV specials on computer animation...


Tue, Oct 28, 2003, @ 9:22
3- Martine

When I was in film school and spent countless hours in the edit room, my dreams would be full cinematic versions of daily life, with fade in and fade out, traveling shots, tilt up and down, dolly and crane shots, etc. I would become aware of every single cuts. It was great because my budget was never limited!


Wed, Oct 29, 2003, @ 9:09
4- lightspeedchick

I recently was in a dream when I realized I was dreaming. This often happens when something so outrageous occurs, it can't possibly be real.

Anyway, my friend Ced was in this dream as well, and I was trying to explain to him that he should wake up, because if he was meeting me here in this dream, it was obvious that he was dreaming too, wherever he was in real life.

It was only when I really woke up that I realized, I'd been conscious enough to know I was dreaming, but not enough to realize there was no way Ced was dreaming the same thing I was...


Mon, Dec 1, 2003, @ 22:31
5- S. Mann

Dreamblogging is something I call Dream of Deconsciousness (Stream of Deconscious writing from a dream). If you can capture your thoughts and ideas without moving, you can make the dream re-entrant. It's a kind of undigital world of hyper-lateral multithreaded thinking.


A Ouiki is a multi-person dreamblog. Something close to a ouiki can occur if you have a room full of people connected to brainwave machines affecting the space to which they all perceive the outputs, and from a meditative state, enter a kind of stream-of-decon meditation, like we had in "Deconcert" (Google "deconism").