We millenia-old semi-mythical dog types spend a lot of time weaving through dreams, the subconscious and the unconscious. It's in the job description. So, when, a couple of days ago, Japanese scientists announced that they'd taken tentative steps to 'read' images in people's brains and display them, I raised an eyebrow. The mechanics involve a lot of big expensive, cool science-y stuff, described in science-y language, but there's a slightly simpler translation here.The commentary I've seen so far is along the lines of "Cool! In ten years I can show my friends my dreams! In Technicolor®™!"
Does anybody else feel alarmed?
Until now, we coyotes assumed that our thoughts and dreams were very private things, unless we ourselves chose to describe them to somebody else. Considering some of the things I've thought, that's a comfort. Because the idea that others might see them leads my thoughts down a very dark Orwellian alley. Coyote's 116th Law states if such a tool exists, somebody, somewhere, will find a way to misuse it, probably in the name of something like, oh, homeland security. The corollary to Coyote's 116th Law is that such equipment will eventually be consumerized, be manufactured in quantity and then fall into the hands of officious masses of un- or under-trained idiots who think they know what they're doing, simply because they're packing the gear and had a half-day workshop. Think airport security screeners. Or Tasers.
You may also be thinking that the paranoid doggy dreams of imaginary monsters under his bed, but that leads to my point. My dreams are mine, and you very probably can't understand them unless you are me. I don't know what you dream, of a night, when your paws scrabble as if you're chasing bunnies across a pristine prairie, but I'm not convinced that somebody else peeking in on the complicated swirl of oddly dis/un/connected images that is a dream is gonna interpret it with any reliability. I have trouble articulating it because of the nature of dreams themselves, but I suspect that they are far more about individual background, context and feeling than about a fragmentary movie playing on a voyeur's monitor. Without the associated feelings the movie is really out of focus. I also suspect that any equipment freak who thinks he can parse 'em in anything other than the crudest way can dream on. In Technicolor®™.
