From: "Tim Murphy" <info-AT-cinox.demon.co.uk>
Subject: RE: Are you having computer dreams?  [November re-post survey]
Date: Tue, 21 Nov 2000 15:00:11 -0000


Hi Richard Wilkerson,

What a very interesting study!!!

I am a computer person (47) .

Here are a few things I have experienced.

When I was first learning to use a new GUI (Win95), I can remember dreaming
in the Win95 environment.
My dreamscape was a Win95 desktop.

What happened was this.

>From the "Start menu button" I selected "programs" and a list of icons
appeared just as it does in real life.

The difference was that instead of a list of the usual software programs I
saw a list of topics that I intended to dream about.

I would then click into a dream topic,  dream something on that subject for
a while then "save". Then I would  return to the menu and choose another
topic, click into that subject... etc.

Another semi-dream I had was on waking.

I had my eyes closed and all I could see was the usual dark red/black that
one sees when ones eyes are closed in a dark room. My partner pulled back a
curtain just at the lower corner to let a little light in.  She created a
small triangle of light as it were. As she did so I woke but did not open my
eyes straight away. My face was turned to the window and I felt the light on
my face... at the same my eyes were still closed but they registered the
increase in light. I saw a somewhat lighter red triangular patch on my
retina caused by the light from the pulled back curtain.

What happened exactly was that at this time I was learning how to do DTP.
When this patch of light appeared on my retina, my brain "pasted" its image
in place, complete with the outline of a "frame" with "handles" on it just
like you would see in a DTP program.

I don't dream about graphics and computers as much now but I have had the
experience many times of waking up in the morning with the answer to a
computer problem clearly in my mind when I was unable to find the answer the
previous evening.

Sometimes when this happens I can remember dreaming my way through a list of
the alternative technical issues and then hitting on it. Other times I just
know the answer or can recall the outcome of the dream but not the whole
process.

This kind of dream is not really that graphical, more a kind of sorting
dream going through all the possibilities until I hit on it. Sometimes it
could be that I get the answer as an insight dream without going through
everything, the answer just comes to me when I am dreaming almost as an
aside. Sometimes if it is an important thing that I have been concerned
about I will wake up and be aware of my discovery, then I will return to
sleep. This seems to help me to remember what I have discovered during the
dream.

That is all I can remember.

It seems to me that when you get to know an OS quite well "it has programmed
you" in a way. Both your visual cortex and your problem solving/modelling
capacities rewire. Sometimes (when not asleep) I see things in pixels even
if I look away from the computer or more rarely even if I am not at a
computer ... I have to blink to "reset" my eyes as it were. It seems that my
visual cortex sometimes models what I see using computer style projections
in some ordinary circumstances.

My brother (42) who is a Psychotherapist reported this dream to me...

That in a dream he could see many Internet servers in dark 3D voluminous
space. The Internet servers had rows of different coloured small lights on
them (like LEDs) that winked when they were communicating. He felt that they
communicated by these lights through line of sight. For some time he
observed them doing this, thousands of them.

Then he panned back as it were, so that he could see the general pattern of
the servers and their winking lights. He saw that there was another computer
system watching the all Internet servers and observing their communications.
The system was much more sophisticated and was invisible to the servers and
the users.

He did not know what this system was or who (if anyone) controlled it but he
felt that it was malign and sinister.

Good luck with your research.

Tim

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-technology-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
[mailto:owner-technology-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu]On Behalf Of
Wilkerson, Richard
Sent: 09 November 2000 19:13
To: technology-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
Subject: Are you having computer dreams? [November re-post survey]

snip



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