Hacking dreams: sleep scientists warn us against ads industry

Will iPhone 18 have an FDA-certified sleep-sensor to reduce smoking by provoking dreams? Maybe, but there are other aspects that worry scientists.

“Yesterday is but today’s memory, and tomorrow is today’s dream” -Khalil Gibran

Every day, we experience and make sense of our life through our senses. We add meaning to what happens to us. We create and store in our minds innumerable memories. Scientists tell us that while dreaming, we elaborate and classify our memories according to importance and relevance.

That means that:

• We are what we remember.
• Sleep and dreams influence how we feel during the day, our socializing attitude and, our ability to adapt to change.

Can we change ourselves by exploiting sleep?

Sleep scientists think so. They believe that acting on them can alleviate psychiatric disorders, fight addictions, augment creativity, or the ability to learn.

Their research explores the possibility to influence and extend hypnagogia, the semi-lucid sleep state. Time, space, sense of self. During this state, they all get distorted, allowing us to live a creative experience not bounded by our conscious brain.

Recent trials seem promising.

Is science unlocking the doors of our dreams?

MIT Media Lab Fluid Interfaces Group is serious about it. They have designed Dormio, a hand-worn device that aims to intercept the right moment to trigger audio signals that can materialize objects influencing our dreams. Initial trials show that whispering to the participant the word tiger at the right moment would put a tiger in her dream!

Dormio is an open-source program and, it is possible to find on the net circuit board designs and bio-signal tracking software: odds are that the research effort will increase in the following years.

Can we expect that iPhone 18 will have an FDA-certified sensor to reduce smoking by simply conditioning dreams? Maybe, and this would be acceptable. There are other aspects, though, that make scientists worry.

The sinister side

Improving overall well-being might not be the only way of using these technologies. The risk of misusing them to influence the behaviors in a harmful direction is reality.

Let’s see 3 uses that call for dystopias:

Forcing purchasing

Can we expect our sleeping time filled with brands and jingles in the future? In addition, these devices seem to work with fighting addiction: so what if they can also be used to provoke new ones?

This future may happen earlier than we think: Molson Coors has used “targeted dream incubation” to incept their beer in the dreams of Super Bowl viewers the night before the game. So far on cooperative subjects. Will this always be the case?

Conditioning behavior

What if these technologies will plant ideas in our dreams that we would not consider reasonable if proposed when awake. Political marketers could use these technologies to bend our opinion around politicians’ behavior that otherwise, we would consider inappropriate, or they could use them to influence opinions around civil rights, diversity, and inclusion topics.

Hacking mind

Dreams and sleep have a clear function for our memory and, alternating it might have counter effects on our life in directions that we cannot expect. It might be a subject for a science fiction plot but might alter the way our mind works and open the door to potential new types of viruses.

It should not come as a surprise that sleep scientists have intercepted the potential misuse of these technologies. In an open letter signed by researchers spread in 11 countries, they nail down their warning and ask for regulations to prevent misusage.

A few decades ago, we used the same approach for subliminal ads.

A public debate on this type of ads pushed the Federal Trade Commission to consider them a violation of truth in advertising.

Starting a conversation about how this research can slip badly can protect our sleeping time to become a greenfield for unscrupulous conditioning.

Conclusion

Since the dawn of history, dreaming has been a fascinating part of our life, an entry to our inner self, as Sigmund Freud would say.

Neuroscientists and psychologists are seeing a huge potential in treating mental disorders, boosting creativity and, fighting addictions through new sleep devices. This research has attracted the attention of ads industry and sleep scientists from several countries have signed an open letter that warns us about the potential misuse of their research, asking for a public debate and potentially some regulatory effort.

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Disclaimer: Views or opinions represented in this article are personal and belong solely to the article writer and do not represent those of people, institutions or organizations that the writer may or may not be associated with in professional or personal capacity, unless explicitly stated.

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