Via Mrs. Weer’d this cool story!
Cognitive scientists working at MIT have devised a means for not only altering the dreams of rats, but of demonstrating a way of testing what they’ve achieved, offering evidence that it can be done, and in so doing have offered a glimpse into what may lie ahead for people who wish to manipulate their own dreams. Daniel Bendor and Matthew Wilson, working out of MIT’s Picower Institute for Learning and Memory have, as they describe in their paper published in Nature Neuroscience, used audio sounds to influence the dreams of rats they were studying.
That’s very neat! It was taken to the dark and sinister extreme in the Philip K. Dick story “We Can Remember it For You Wholesale” (adapted to screen as “Total Recall”), but really, how cool would it be to buy a designer high-quality dream?
I’m not even happy with storebought products, I don’t think I would ever be happy with a storebought dream.
Just avoid the dream where space aliens think you are so awesome that they will hold off on invading earth while you live, and you should be ok!
The link takes me to a story about a birth control pill for men.
Crap, that was another story I was reading at the same time.
Link should be fixed now!
Thanks
As with many things, there is a tremendous upside to this concept.
And a huge, dark downside. One that I barely want to consider; much less stick around and live through.
Sci-Fi can explore some of the issues as you say but I’ve found that even the best writer often can not comprehend how twisted some people can take ideas.
I don’t know, Philip K Dick was a very, very twisted person.