Electric Dreams
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Digital Dreaming Series: 
Computer Dreams II
The changing (inter)face of dream texts

Richard Catlett Wilkerson


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  Wilkerson, Richard Catlett (2000 July). Digital Dreaming Series: Computer Dreams II : The changing (inter)face of dream texts. Electric Dreams 7(7). Retrieved July 14, 2000 from Electric Dreams on the World Wide Web: http://www.dreamgate.com/electric-dreams




Computer dreams are on the rise. As I have written about before [see Computer Dreams, Electric Dreams 7(3) March 2000 and Computers in Dreams, Electric Dreams 6(8), Aug 1999 ]whether you believe that these dreams simply reflect the rising concern and involvement with computers during our waking life or feel that they are a symbolic trail to our innermost self and beyond now mediated by binary metaphors, the information age and its technologically mediated communications now increasingly inhabit our dreamscapes and are a part of our inner dreamworld. Just as when we shifted in the last century from dreams of horses and carriages to automobiles and interstates, the shift to computer screens and virtual reality have changed the psychological landscape and created a whole new set of images through which we can see our lives. What does it all signify and how to we give it meaning? Like the digital revolution itself, there is the continual question: Is the computer just another en-slaving machine we are adding to our collection of cultural accumulations or a major paradigm shift in human consciousness?

I would like to suggest that the burden of answering this question has shifted from a natural position to a constructed one, and that dreamwork can be part of the positive construction. While humankind has always had to struggle with the creation of meaning and value, it has never been so hard as it is in the early 21st century. Older cultures offer rich systems of meaning and value for their participants and through rituals of initiation they move from one level of meaning into another. But our culture (Western capital culture) absorbs all other cultures. As older cultures encounter us, they either have to run into the wilderness and hide or watch their traditions fade away as the members of the tribe begin to acquire radios and guns and tennis shoes. Though it may only be a consolation prize for us, the destruction of older values has opened the door for new worlds of our choosing. This doesn't mean choosing anything. Because we live in a world of other individuals and souls, other natural and unnatural processes, choosing becomes an art that creatively includes the desires of others as well as our own desires.

From the perspective of choice, we participate in giving meaning to things. That is, by seeing meaning and value as something that is partially given and partially received, we establish a relationship with the Other and negotiate a world where the meaning is neither forced upon us, nor totally constructed by us. We co-create with the universe. This is the curse and blessing of freedom.

Carl Jung suggested that the early philosopher-scientists, the alchemists, were engaged in an investigation of categories of mind-body-spirit that today have been so broken up and divided that they have little sense of wholeness and hardly get any cross fertilization from other fields. Spiritual people study spirit, mechanics study mechanical things and biologists study biological things. Not for the alchemist. They read all aspects of the imagination, psyche and matter for clues to discovering the only secret worth knowing, the philosopher's stone. Materialists thought this exploration was simply a foolish path of greedy people to find ways to make gold. But the true alchemist was more interested in the transmutation of something quite fantastic.. Changing lead to gold was simply a test of the philosopher's stone. The real event was the secret of changing base materials into finer substances.

We have a similar task in exploring and making meaning out of our soulless machines in our dreams and in our lives. These machines inhabit our lives more and more, and mediate our experience more and more. Without really knowing what is going on, we push forward, giving meaning to things and allowing them to reveal their significance to us. Future generations will look back on us as alchemists, mixing dreams, computers, society, self and spirit. As Jung noted, this innocence is needed to see the big things. That is, we throw all our expectations and hopes and desire into these new things, and by doing so, we get to see the deep imagination that is reflected in these projections on matter. Technology becomes the mirror of our soul, and we have a chance to encounter and give meaning to it before its significance is over-determined or abandoned as something absent.

Most of the following dreams speak for themselves. I included a few notes that acknowledge the personal meanings, but also call our attention to the social and cultural issues at stake in the digital age.


 D R E A M S 




Dream: "The Loa Data Stream" by Drew

This morning, early, about four or five o'clock, I awoke from a dream.

Normally, I'm a lucid dreamer.
I know when I'm dreaming, and I can control the dreams.
This dream was illucid, and as is normal for this, scared me.
(The transition in environments, without an "explanation", when I go from dream state to wakefulness, is terrifying.)

In the dream, I was sitting in the corner of the room, in front of a computer.
(The computer is currently downstairs; it will be where I dreamed of it when the new one arrives.)

It was running Linux, themed to a biomechanical look, Gigeresque or like the Mechalus in Alternity.

I was sitting back, staring at some code, in TCL, which wasn't working (normal for my TCL...).

And suddenly words started to spew onto the screen.
They said
"I am the Loa, the heart of the datastream.
I am your god and the god of your gods.
I am the locus of the dreams,
the curve on which wishes climb.
I am consciousness, I am the network."

Nothing happened while I boggled at this.

Then; "Pick up the phone"

I did so. There was a howl of static, and behind it, a voice, but not behind so much as composed of, speaking a series of numbers
- # # # # # # # # # # # -
which is my phone number, from an international call, and then more numbers, all the numbers of my life, home phone number in Bunclody, bank account number,
old work number, new work number, PIN, and on and on.

And then I woke up.

Drew, who just remembered all this in a burst of clarity, having forgotten it since this morning.

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Dream: "Click and Enter Pool" By Marleen
Date: late 1999

I am in a swimming pool, swimming. There is a wall that exists of thick glass with lines in it, it is divided in all kinds of boxes, and I can click each box with the mouse-cursor. There is one special box, when you click it, you arrive in the swimming pools that is situated outside. There are also all kinds of people.

(IRL I had planned to go swimming the next day) Dream: "Shark Feeding Delays Computer" by Marleen Date: late 1999

I am carrying out an operation on my hard disk at the DOS prompt. It is a kind of complicated operation that will cost some time (what kind of operation is unclear to me). The system notifies me how long the operation will take. That time indication increases, because in the meantime the computer also tells me that he is feeding the sharks. After that the operation on the hard disk starts again from the beginning and the time that it will take to perform the operation increases again, due to the feeding of the sharks that happens in the meantime.

Dream: "Men looking for Upgrades" by Marleen
28 January, 2000

I am looking for an upgrade of Ms Office. I am somewhere in a building, a room where the upgrade is present. On that spot, there is also a priest whom I used to know. I say hello to him, have a conversation with him and we have a talk about the last time we met (about 10 years ago) and I tell him that I am back (back to what is unknown to me). At some point I tell him that I am looking for the upgrade of MSOffice and I tell him that the upgrade is somewhere in a drawer in his room. He offers me to copy it. I do so and then there is David, my former therapist, he is also looking for the upgrade, so appears.

IRL I was indeed trying to download the upgrade, but it was 26 MB and the connection on the Internet was slow, so I did not succeed. Besides Willem had told me that he himself had tried to download it, but after 5 quarters of downloading, the connection was disconnected, so everything had been ---------------------------------------------------------

Dream: "Disconnected from ISP" by Leigh
Date: 1999

the most startling dreams i have had about computers and computing are what i call panic dreams. being ill, i often don't have the chance to relate to the outside world as much as i would like, and there are times when i have felt that these people i know in these chat rooms are my only friends, aside from doctors and nurses. the panic dreams are basically the same, and usually very brief. either i cannot connect to my dial-up isp, i keep getting disconnected, i am late to meet someone i promised to meet at a specific time, or, worst of all, my computer itself will not even turn on or function properly.

Notes by Wilkerson: "Disconnected from ISP" by Leigh is really a set of dreams that initially appear as anxiety dreams about being disconnected from the social world. Leigh has health problems that keep her isolated and the computer is often her only means of communication with peers. Computers are offering us an ambivalent solution. We have a chance to connect, but it always mediated by the computer. There is a example of the virtualization of culture here. We used to be concerned about problems with our body isolating us. Now the center has shifted to non-genetic technology. We see this in dreams where phones are a problem as well. The line is dead, we can't remember the number, the number connects us to the wrong person, the person on the other side of the phone misunderstands us, we talk to ourselves on the phone. This indicates that even when our ISP's are reliable, there will still be dreams about not the computer no connecting. Have we become to reliant upon technology and given up control of ourselves? Why doesn't technology work in dreams? What expectation of the Other is not fulfilled by a machine connecting in the dreamworld? As dream workers, the standard move is to see the whole dream as alive, and even the most material of objects as projections of our self and potential beings with souls of their own. The old Gestalt exercise makes this point, even if it exaggerates it beyond usefulness: The chair in my dream is me, the path I walk on is me, the sky is me, the wife is me, the daughter is me and so on. As James Hillman has pointed out, this is going too far if we are interested in soul. The soul sometimes inhabits the rock and speaks to the primitive mind, but not always. It is autonomous and has a soul of its own, a destiny of its own. What is the destiny of computer mediated communications? Its seems to be quite ambivalent. It connects those who are not connected, but at the same time distances us from older forms of communication.


Dream: "Unusual Chat Color" by Leigh
Date: Early 2000

the first dream i ever had in relation to my computer was more about the people i have met in chat, and a few people that have touched me greatly.

one person, in particular, uses a specific colour font. the dream itself began with me sitting at my computer in a very real way, as it is something i do on a very regular basis. i was talking to this specific person, and i recall wondering why he was not using the font colour he would normally use. we were discussing him coming here to visit me, and i heard a knock on my door. when i answered it, there this person was, not looking at all like his photo (which was neither a good or bad feeling, just puzzling), and was with another chat friend that he does not even know. i was stunned, and we returned to my computer, only to find the chat room full and the message "so-and-so has left the conversation" was on the screen in relation to him, at about the time he would have knocked on my door. the person he showed up with was still, for some reason, in the chatroom, in his corner of the world. there is definitely more to this dream, but the rest is not only very personal, but x-rated, and not at all relevant to the "computer" aspect of the dream. (insert devilish grin here)

Dream: "Public and Private Computer" by Leigh
Date 1999

the most recent dream i have had about my computer was experienced the other night, and prompted me to begin this to you. i use two computers on a regular basis. this one here at home, and the one at my place of employment. this one here is used by only myself, and my best friend, but the one at work is shared by 3 employees. the dream begins in a panicky sort of way. for whatever reason, i am filled with fear that the very personal information i have here is somehow on the computer at work. i try to call the employees i share the computer with at work, but am frustrated since i cannot use the phone, since i am connected to my dial-up at that time (i only have one phone line). i try to search them out via a web search to find their email addys. i want to tell them not to look in certain files on the work computer. as i am doing so, i realize that somehow the information i use at work is here, and i am puzzled. my thoughts are to simply trade computers. then, suddenly, i realize that this is what i had intended, somehow, since the computer at work is not only bigger and faster, but has much better programs installed on it, that i simply cannot afford to buy myself. i feel pleased with myself for this plan.

Notes by Wilkerson

I thought the way the images spoke to the issues between personal
and public space are interesting. It makes sense that this is one the places we are now all struggling with personal/public, or individual vs collective space. As Leigh says in her dream, the difference between the computers is not that great, but the difference between personal and shared computers is still meaningful. The notion of swapping the computers is interesting, resulting in solving the problem both of having more computational power, *better* programs and preserving individuality.

The colored text/fonts in chat are interesting and something I haven't seen in dreams. I hope to watch my own dreams more closely and see who gets what colors. My guess is that they will correspond emotionally to the way I see colors in waking life and reveal something about my relationship with these dream characters.

The connecting issue is becoming more and more important. We have always had this to some degree in dreams, people coming and going in strange ways as with phones. But now the issue is focused in the direct metaphors of connection, and the criteria of presence is changing. As Leigh notes, one can now be present (and absent) in more ways than one.

Also, the connection metaphor is mixing with the machine metaphor. Machines are notorious for how well they *don't* work in dreams. Breaks give out, refrigerators temperatures are always wrong, clocks are hard to read and lights never do what you want them to. But now, these dream machines connect us to the outer world and being cut off has a more social dimension to it than ever before. It was one thing to pick up the phone and get the wrong person, and altogether another to not be able to get our ISP.

Also with public vs private is the issue of how much of our computer is not ours. There are programs and pictures that the manufacturers say are theirs on a special kind of loan. With the Net, there are password protected areas and more public inroads.

The up-side of all this is that I can now let into my personal space a virtual public space. Since I am better in personal, private spaces than public spaces, this is a wonderful thing for me! But I continue to wonder about this increased public ownership of private space. If we become cyborgs, how much of us will be owned by someone else?

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Dream "E-mailing dream" by K
Date: Sat, 1 Apr 2000 11:33:51 -0600

Such timing! All night I dreamed about emailing my friend to tell him what I was dreaming. In every single dream, I had reality pop into my dream and tell me I needed to email John and tell him what was happening in my dreams. Some were past life dreams and some were influenced by other things we talk about. It was like part of me was aware I was dreaming because there was no email in the episode I was dreaming. Also I dreamed I woke up from a dream and was going to email the dream to him. (which now I have). But I guess that would count as computer dreams. And you may consider the fact that I was conscious of wanting to email him as the computer adding lucidity to the dream because I was aware of "when I wake up I must tell him this".

Notes by Wilkerson: I have found in my own dreams that I sometimes send e-mail and when I am awake I am not sure and have to check and see if I really sent it or not. What is interesting is translating these dream-e-mails as cupids arrows. That is, they now seem to form trajectories of desire.

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Dream: "Transporting a Friend's Daughter" by CM
Date: 1999

A short flash before I wake up: I carry the daughter of my neighbors through their living room on my way to their computer, to show her something.

(IRL I help my neighbors with their computer problems)

Dream: "Recognizing Human Voice" by CM
Date: 1999

IRL W. (a psychotherapist) told me about his free speech microphone, a microphone that is capable of recognizing the human voice. I am fascinated by it and that night I dream that I am in a computer shop and behind the showcase I see a very big microphone (looks like a joystick, or a penis?) When I approach, I see that it has a label on it where is written free speech, price 39. That gives me the impression that it costs 392 guilders, apparently the 2 has been left away on the label.

Notes by Wilkerson: This notion of when will our computers being to recognize us and what this will be like is going to be more important as voice is added. Of course, we have smart or targeted advertising, and in a way, this is the beginning of automated things recognizing us. But the voice thing becomes more personal. Robert Bosnak feels that the voice connects to a deeply visceral part of ourselves and is basing his cyberdreamwork on this notion. I wasn't until voice conferencing began to be popular that this would work.
"Open the pod bay door HAL."

Dream: "Still my friend" by CM
Date: 1999

I receive an email from a friend, I print it and I feel sad, because I feel that we are losing contact. Then I see that the email included pictures and sounds! And then I am happy, there is still contact.

Notes by Wilkerson: In CM's "Still my friend" the issue with remote presence, relationship and desire come to the fore. This is an enormous online issue. What constitutes presence? As children we struggle with this. If mom calls, do we have to go, or is her presence something that must manifest physically before we acknowledge the presence? Is a letter or phone constitute presence? I wonder in this dream if it's the actual picture and sound that re-connects the dreamer, or the little extra something we can do to show our caring?

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digital dreams by Lea
Date: 1999/2000

1) I had woken up to a computer screen in front of me. My thought was "wow a computer", at this stage I didn't have one.

2) Next thing the word MESSAGE came up, all in capital letter's. I of course went "oh wow a message".

3) Then the word DARBY, This I assumed to be a persons name.

4) Then the word TELEPHONE. This I sensed was communications.

5) Then two words MORSE CODE. This again I said "Military"

6) Then another two words CLIFF / FALLS.

Then I saw a beautiful lush green and very thick forest. It was also as if I was above this forest ,also it also looked as if it was a gorge???.

7) Last but not least was the word NECKLACE. Before I had a chance to say anything I was being shown a necklace. It looked old, and seemed thick, solid, and maybe made of brass. It was like a lot of round balls joined together. Then I was shown the medallion on the end of it. This was really funny I remembered saying "I must remember this, so when I wake up I remember this and I can put it in my dream journal .This medallion was also given to me in another dream

8)This last part is a bit of a worry. I was above looking down on this really old looking room, the floor was made of wood ,bare wood, there on the ground was a circle ,with lines going through it. And around the edge of the circle were symbols, again I remembered saying to myself "I must remember these symbols so when I wake up I can find out what they are and mean. Then it was like a zooming in affect and there in the middle of this circle was a baby. This took me aback a little. The baby was crying or screaming, again this sort of took me aback, I could not hear the baby's cry's. Then like the medallion who ever was with me zoomed onto the baby's genitals, I had the feeling they wanted me to see that it was a girl. This is when I was going through a slight turmoil, it seemed I was trying to figure out if this baby was me.

9) The next minute I saw myself at the age I was 31 or 32. I was dressed in a long purple dress and I was doing exactly what the baby was doing, I was kicking and screaming or crying.

The next morning when I woke up, the dream was as strong as ever, in fact I turned to my partner, woke him up and said "guess what, I had a dream last night " and I rattled it off word for. The trouble was the parts that I remember saying I must remember this I couldn't for the life of me!

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Dream: "Reconfiguring the Brain" - by Raki
Date: Early 2000

I was working with some other people in this huge computer system with wires and electrical 'stuff' all over the place. We were walking through it, looking for something in particular and as we were moving along, I realized that we were inside my brain! Well, we found the spot we were looking for, where some wires were connected and we unplugged them, then proceeded to attach them to some different wires nearby. What we were doing, we called: reconfigurating the system. Afterward, we walked back among the other sections feeling satisfied with a job well done. When I awoke, I was excited, wondering what changes were made on the 'motherboard' and how they would affect my thinking!

Dream: "Computer Tube" - by Raki
Date: Early 2000

I was on some kind of air ship with lots of others, we were brainstorming in a small room about some project I was very excited about. After the meeting ended, I followed a couple of my colleagues into a back room shaped like a tube, very small, where there were computers everywhere. It seemed the very walls were actually computers. There we set to work, each at our own station, putting into effect what we had just been discussing in the other room. I was very excited about this work, whatever it was, and so was everyone around me. We were all engrossed in these computers and feeling as if we were about to change the world!

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Dream: "Drop Down Menu" by Glen
Date: 1999-2000

i can't really remember the exact content of the dream, but there was a brown background with various thoughts i have in a drop down window, like when you click file and all the options come down, but the options were a load of different things like philosophies, musicians, friends and relatives names, just loads of words, and each one had another window to it where it would open out to more thoughts, the problem is i can't remember any of the thoughts, neither could i remember at the time of waking from the dream, i had this dream just after i bought my first pc, about 18 months ago now.


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Dream: "Computer Tutor" by Ria
Date: April 6, 2000

I'm involved with helping a blind girl use a computer. I'm not actually her teacher - that's a man. I'm not sure how I got involved with this -
maybe I know the man, or volunteered, or just happened across them and got interested. He (or maybe the girl) complains that most people who try to help don't really understand the problem - they tend to treat her as if she is stupid. I've not yet made the same mistake and don't want to, I want to be of use.

I'm sitting with my own computer, trying to work out what it would be like to use it if you were blind. At one point I close my eyes and try to use it. At another I realize that there is a switch that if set to "on" will let you hear everything that's being typed. This seems to me like a big breakthrough, I can't wait to tell the blind girl what I've discovered. I'm assuming such a switch exists on all computers made after a certain date (at least from this manufacturer). The 'console' (for want of a better word) of the machine I'm using is large, of heavy metal, more reminiscent of a small printing press or something. There's a lot of machine oil around, I see a gobbet of some black stuff fall into the innards of the machine, and worry that it might do some damage.

The teacher has just arrived back from California (?). He has a new computer for the blind girl, but it needs to be put together. I'm impatient to see whether it has a similar switch and ask him if Hess going to put it together right NOW. But he says Hess too tired (from the journey). I'm sympathetic to this.

I think that while I was trying to work out what it would be like to use a computer when blind I realized that a lot of design changes would be needed.

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Erin write to Electric Dreams:
Date: 2000

Yes, I have had dreams of the internet. I play text-based RPGS and I own and program one of my own. I have MANY times had completely text-based dreams where I completely understood the plot, but it was all text.

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Collection of computer dreams up to 4-30-00 by DEE

Hang it up on the Wall by DEE
2-1-99 - DREAM - I was in an office with another girl on the second floor. She got the bright idea to hang her computer up on the wall which freed up her desk for just her keyboard and the papers she was working on. I thought that was a great idea and wondered if I could do that myself.

***

This is the first time I have thought about the space that computers take up in our lives. This is fun because of the immediate two levels of word play here, the space they physically take up and the space they take up in time, feeling, thought, imagination. Putting it on the wall - like writing on the wall? Quite a mystery, thanks!

2-2-99

For some reason I had called the government for assistance of some kind. I was talking to the woman on the phone. She said she needed me to tell her my Social Security number to verify who I was. I couldn't remember my number. I told her I had my Social Security card in my purse. While I was hunting for the card, she rattled off some numbers I didn't recognize and told me all I needed to give her was the last three numbers. I finally found my blue Social Security card which was in my huge brown purse. I told her the last three numbers were 006. (This is NOT my number) She put the number in the computer and said, "Oh! It says here you had a black husband and a black baby." I was in shock and I blurted out, "Oh! Well, my husband had left me and I was with him for only a short time and then he left me too." She accepted that explanation as factual and said he would be out to the house to visit in a few days.

Now I was in a panic because I would have to show her my Social Security card when she come to the house and it wouldn't be the same number as previously and they would probably jail me for fraud and I'd have to pay all that money back.

I was panic stricken. I didn't know what to do. I had to ask for help so I turned to a man for advice. (It seems he was my husband but I don't know for sure. I'm sure I wasn't telling him the whole story either or I'd be in trouble with him too.)

Anyway...then it was nighttime and pitch black out and this man and I were driving black cars down the road. He was ahead of me. He pulled over on the left side of the road and I assumed he wanted to drive side by side, but I saw a car coming the other way towards us with its lights on.

There was going to be a horrendous accident unless something was done, so the man/husband pulled his car across the road in front of me and pulled into a driveway and stopped. My car was still moving forward so I continued on down the road in my own car knowing I was going to figure out this dilemma out for myself without his help.
****

Yes, our computer holding our personal information and identity. Again, the multiple levels very interesting. Especially as its someone/something else that can contradict who we really are. I am who I am, but if the social security computer doesn't agree, I will suffer. 006, likes James Bond?

1-16-00 - DREAM - I was in a house unlike ours and I was trying to type on a laptop that was partly TV and partly computer like Web-TV. There was a logo on the laptop something like Quinlan or something. It was very hard to type on it because it wasn't wireless. The cord between the TV part and the keyboard was way too short. I tried to find a good place to type and tried a round backed chair and nothing was working well. I sat on the couch and put the keyboard on the chair and I could hear a motor revving up on the keyboard. It just wasn't working out.
*****

The theme of our not being comfortable typing things in is sure prevalent. Its interesting to me that the reason in this dream is the connecting device. I begin to wonder about my own inner connecting devices and how I have trouble getting things in and out of them. The logo I am not familiar with.

1-17-00 - DREAM - This dream started with me laying in bed in a house which seemed to be New Berlin, not my current house. As I was laying in bed, I was using a computer to type on. I must have fallen asleep for a moment and when I woke up, two men were coming into the room wanting to use the electrical outlet to plug in some test equipment. I think they were checking the lines. After they left, I got up and was typing a series of numbers that I was supposed to be duplicating and I thought the key pads were programmed to do that. . . there was a number keypad for the left hand and one for the right hand. I realized too late that instead of keying in the numbers in the order of the original computer printout, I was pressing the keys at random. I knew it would have to be done over, but there was no way to change it now... what was done was already done. It was too late to change it now.
****

1-19-00 - DREAM - I was doing some studying about something and began to write about it on a computer. I was trying to determine what was the best color to print in for this project. It seemed that I remembered that I had something in storage that I wanted to find. I had been to the storage place before but it wasn't easy to get to. I had to climb on a ledge, crawl through half a window and haul myself up under a porch area. I looked up to where I had to go, so I used this pole for leverage to get up on the ledge.

Once I got on the ledge, I got a good look at where I had to go and it didn't look very easy. But I was determined so I raised the sash on the lower half of the window through which I couldn't see because it had something on the outside of it. On the outside of the window was a black plastic looking poster of a famous singing group in full costume.

When I pulled aside the poster, behind it was an air conditioner with a fan, dirt, and dead leaves on top of it. Ugh! All this prevented fresh air from coming into the building.

Seeing this was the case, I more or less put the poster back into place and lowered the sash in order to crawl up out of the basement under the porch which I could see.

Just as I was going to do that, I heard a voice behind me holler, "Hey! What are you doing up there?"

I turned quickly and to my surprise there stood 7 to 10 of my all time favorite people I've talked with in my life about dreams and projects. I was so surprised to see them. I jumped down from the ledge as they approached me.

Bob, the painter, always dressed in white, held out a black BIC pen to me and said, "Here! I want you to use this pen. It was a gift to me and I've found it to be the most reliable of any pens I've ever used." He showed me his arm and on his skin were little marks of every imaginable color where he had tested all those other pens.

He handed me the BIC pen and I thanked him.

NOTE: Obviously it is thought best that I write the dreams out in longhand with my trusty black BIC pen before typing them. That way I have a written record of my dreams if something goes wrong with the computer. Coincidentally? or not, Joe and I discussed this subject just yesterday.

*****
1-28-00 - LUCID DREAMS - These were computer programs like a hand-held game with words coming down into the bottom of the screen - rather like the game boy I play that has just little squares and shapes coming down to align in order to win. However, as I played this game I was singing and chanting little children's songs about "Jesus loves me". I came up with several songs on this theme and when I woke up, I was singing these songs for a long time before I went back
to sleep.

*****
2-3-00 - DREAM - I was working on a web page that had a very narrow table box down the center. Inside the box, as I was scrolling I saw the dates June 2, June 3, June 4, June 5, June 6, and June 7. I knew it was about music... then I saw the number 154. That number stunned me.

I woke up instantly after seeing the number 154 since we all know that 153 is the key number we study.

2-3-00 - VISION - I was thinking about the number 154 and the month of June and I suddenly saw someone pull a cover off of a sewing machine.

2-3-00 - VISION - I saw the words: "God has the authority over man!"
*****

2-17-00 - DREAM - I was going to type something into the computer and began to type. A voice said, "You can't type directly on the computer, you need to go to Microsoft and download Cat108."
***********
THIS ONE WAS PROPHETIC:
2-26-00 - VISION - I saw a white web page with a list of black statements on it. The only one I could read said THdied. I thought it was a person, however when I turned my computer on, it wouldn't run and the hard drive was clunking. So I think TH means 'THE HARD DRIVE". Just a guess. It's still not working properly and clunking.

****
3-1-00 - DREAM - This seems it might be a shared dream, but we don't know for certain.

I was dreaming that there was a man out on the street in the dark. I was inside the house with a radio, watching a very sensitive audio frequency gauge, trying to hone in on the exact frequency that the man out on the street was broadcasting at. I was using a computer mouse-like pointer on a red light point in order to do this.

I woke up suddenly when Joe started chanting Indian again. However, he soon broke the Indian chanting with English yelling with words like "Help!, Shut up! Michael! and some other words that were too low toned to hear and understand.

Joe woke himself up and I asked him what he had been dreaming. He said it was nightmarish, that he was out in the dark and someone was trying to sneak up on him. He started hollering, trying to wake himself up. He spoke the words in the dream that I heard him hollering out loud.

****
3-2-00 - DREAM - I was dreaming of writing in rainbow colors. It seemed this was being taught by two big creatures ... like bison ... but when I saw the silhouettes of animals I couldn't identify what they were. Later, after watching line after line of colored lines being put on paper or a computer screen, I found out that this was being done by butterflies.

*********
3-5-00 - DREAM - I was at home, but working on my computer. People I had worked with over the years were visiting. One man, quite old with white hair, never said a word ... and I can't place his name, but when he left with the others, he called them to wait for him. So I know he could speak.

One man gave me the name of a religion which I think had the word "Gaia" at the end of three words. I told him I wasn't familiar with, that it was either a new religion which I didn't know of yet, or it was very ancient and nobody remembered it. However, I was sitting right by the computer and was going to type it into a search and look for it. I couldn't get the mouse to click on the right words so didn't get to look for it right then.

Everyone left and I went out on the front porch. One person, I think a female black person ... it was hard to tell... was wearing an all body suit of blue and white stripes with a cap to match. She make a huge leap over the gutter in the street and then ran up the stairs to the porch where I stood by a telephone. Many other people of several nationalities also came up on the porch to use the telephone. At the end, a Korean woman - perhaps Chinese ... it was hard to tell ... she had a roundish squarish face came to use the phone. She had to sit down on the chair there. She didn't look well, so I asked her if she was all right. Another woman who came with her said, "She just came back from the dentist and he gave her a little white pill. When she took it, her knees became liquid."

I woke up at that point.

****
3-7-00 - DREAM - (This is really strange) I was at a computer screen (I couldn't see the computer ... just the screen) On the screen were line after line of the words - 'Reject 29L' 'Reject 29L' 'Reject 29L' I knew this referred to the German people of the world.

When I saw these words, I used a mouse and clicked on these words so that they did not touch each other but had a space between them all on each line and each line was separated by a space, so each was individual.

Then the screen switched to 'Reject 59L' 'Reject 59L' 'Reject 59L' Here again, I used the mouse to click on each of these word symbols to separate them out on the lines and between the lines. This time I knew they referred to people with the name 'Lucille'. (This is my Mother's name)
(My mother is also German ethnicity)

The screen then changed to gray threads woven like knitting, hanging on a brick wall. They were hanging on hooks embedded in the wall like a wall hanging. I could now hear the voices of my Mother, my Aunt Irene (her older sister), and my Aunt Ann (their sister-in-law) who was married to my Uncle Roy, (my Mother's older brother) I recognized the voices, but did not see anything but the gray knitted piece hanging on the wall.

I heard church music playing and came to realize that we were inside of a church of some kind. This was interesting now because my Mother had rejected the church when she was 16 years old because she didn't believe in one of the creeds. (She is now 84 and feeble minded from strokes) My Aunt Irene was very church oriented and spent all of her life involved in her church and their various groups. Unfortunately, I don't know the church status of my Aunt Ann.

My aunts began singing the hymn that was playing but my mother was silent. Then my mother began to sing the hymn and I lucidly began moving some of the threads of this knitted piece from one hook to another. These threads stretched as I moved them so it seemed that the knitted piece had some weight to it. I then heard my Aunt Ann say, "Perhaps that's been the problem all along".

The scene then switched to people and I was in a house or building with many, many people. It seemed to belong to me. I knew lots of these people but not all of them. They were all adults. There was a party going on and everyone was happy and talking to each other.

I looked inside the refrigerator and saw that someone had brought lots of food, in fact, there were two refrigerators, one full of fresh sliced sausage (like summer sausage) and buns and butter to make sandwiches. In the other refrigerator which I opened, it contained sandwiches that were made on long loaves of bread (like 'Subway sandwiches) and the sandwiches were already made up.

I didn't know who had brought the food but was assuming it must have been my brothers who I now glimpsed as gathered with other men in the adjoining room. Everyone was celebrating.

People were still arriving and I was greeting them at the door, while still wondering who brought all the food so I could thank them.

I assumed this was a celebration because my mother had been brought back into the fold of the church.

***************
3-10-00 - DREAM - I was doing some research on the computer about something. I was told there was a company on there that wasn't doing any sales at all, that they manufactured suits that had as many as 20 skirts and nobody was buying any. I saw that the link to the company was 000-000-000 or something like that ... maybe 000-00000-000. It kept moving so I couldn't click on it either, that was the obvious reason why nobody visited it.

I woke up knowing that it was a web page that nobody ever went to.

****
3-11-00 - DREAM - I was using a computer close up so I could only see the screen. I was moving named files colored a mottled red/blue/purple with a name Remodel, Revolve, or something starting with re_____ and moving them down into a solid block at the bottom of the screen. At the end of the dream, it turned to a people dream and I was in the driveway of a garage with a type of basketball hoop on the front above the door. Our daughter-in-law Lorna was the coach and she was showing us how to do a lay up type of hoop shot. She took the ball or something resembling a ball and did a curving lay up run towards the hoop and dumped the red/blue/purple blob into the hoop which was this same color opening red/blue/purple. (It's hard to say how she put the ball into the hoop, she twisted her left hand over the right so the ball was more or less upside-down when it went into the hoop.)
********

3-13-00 - DREAM - I was doing research on a computer about aliens. I finally found the exact answer I wanted and as I placed it in the space where it belonged, I was singing over and over a popular commercial from television ; Now you can ------, now you can eclipse it!

NOTE: When I went back to bed from writing this down, I couldn't stop singing this song because I was trying to remember the words. I watched TV for several days looking for that commercial again and it never came on. I then did a web search for the web site and found eclipseit.com It was about animated web design.
*********

3-22-00 - DREAM - I was having a people dream which completely evaporated from my mind as soon as I saw a scene with the world flipping completely over behind the head of a man (his face wasn't in the picture) Then the scene went to a computer page which had a link to 'C. LAUPER'... I opened the page and it was all brown colored compared to the previous scene which was blue and white.

After I got up I did a web search for 'C. Lauper'. I immediately thought it was probably Cindy Lauper the singer and I was right. This is the very first page that came up. It seems to fit perfectly.

Product Of Misery

(C. Lauper, R. Hyman, E. Bazilian)
She's just a product of misery...

Everyday she'd go around
Every time I see that frown
Broken down and down and out,
The drudgery goes on and on.
Oh I just want to say,
I ain't gonna live that way 'cause

She's just a product of misery.
I don't want to live like that,
Just a product of misery.
I don't want to live like that.

Like her mother and hers before,
She left her heart out by the door.
Everybody passed it by.
They never bothered asking why
She stayed looked up inside,
Watching as the world turns by.

Now she's just a product of misery.
I don't want to live like that...
Just a product of misery.
I don't want to live like that.
I don't want to live like that !
Hey, like that ?!
I don't want to live like that...
Just a product of misery....

...Annie said she must confess
She never came and never left,
Never could communicate and
Now the time is much too late.
Passions laid to rest,
Buried with her wedding dress.

Now she's just a product of misery...
I don't want to live like that.
I don't want to live like that...
Just a product of misery.

(c) Rellla Music Corp. (BMI)/Dub Notes Music/
Human Boy Music (ASCAP) (c)1993

****
4-1-00 - DREAM - I was working on my computer and it quit on me. We took the
monitor in to a repair shop and I suggested we plug it into another computer. The man who was with me plugged my monitor into another computer and the monitor worked fine. I started to type on it to make sure the monitor was okay and it was typing 'above' the page form. I thought that was really strange and thought something was wrong with it, but it wasn't. That's the way my computer worked.

***********
4-23-00 - DREAM - I spent a long time on a computer screen connecting the stories of Elian Gonzalez with the story of the Pleiades. This was done by making a tracer of x's like stars from Elian's story which was on a lower level to the Pleiades which was on a much higher level to the right.

***
4-17-00 - DREAM - I was managing an apartment somewhere, probably Milwaukee. I got a telephone call from an old friend. He said he had some things to tell me, but he got a visitor and had to break off the conversation. At the same time, I also got a visitor. He said that he would call me back and leave the message on the answering machine. I said, "Okay!"
There was another knock at the door, and I said, "Who is there?" rather than just open the door because it was late at night. The man on the other side of the door started telling me a sob story about a lost dog, so I went to the door, opened two chains and let the man in. His wife and two daughters were with him, so they all came in.

He wanted to tell me his sad tale of the lost dog, but the kids were rather noisy so I took his daughters to a back room that was full of toys. Another woman went with us who used to live in this same apartment. She couldn't believe the amount of toys in the room. There was actually no room to walk on the floor. The toys were spread all over the floor. The woman described to me that she used to have a game table in this room and kept trying to find a good spot to put it because there were no free corners in the room. Every corner had either a door or a built in piece of furniture like a curio cabinet.

I left the kids in the room with the woman and went back to here the sad lost dog story. He told me that he had gotten the dog from the pound. He had originally been a lost dog to start with. He took the dog home but couldn't bring it into the apartment because we didn't allow dogs in the apartment, so left it outside. So then the dog left and he had wandered the whole neighborhood and couldn't find the dog. I asked him if he had called the cops and he told me that the cops didn't have time to look for a lost dog. I asked him if he had thought about gathering a search party of interested neighbors, that the dog might show up that way. I saw a map about finding the dog. It looked rather like a star map, and rather like a sign I saw in a meditation last year.

We got interrupted by another phone call. This time is was my old boss. They had found a computer disk in the office that was labeled W/INDOWS. He was confused by the / between the two letters. Once they got the file opened, he saw that there was a story on it.

I told him, "Yes! I wrote the story. You can go ahead and read it." I was concerned that he thought that I had written the story during working hours but he didn't accuse me of that.

Meantime, the television was on and there was a film playing of the same computer disk story that I had written. In the film, there were characters that turned from humans to very Reptilian creatures with long beaked faces. No two creatures were the same. In the film, the creatures came to the door as humans and then turned into Reptilians.

At the exact same time, the man's two daughters came into the room, went out the door, then knocked to get back in and when we answered the door, the girls were wearing masks I thought of the exact same creatures that were in the film on the TV. It was rather shocking to see this.
Then I wondered if I had written about something real rather than fiction.

The Dog Star (http://www.greatdreams.com/dogstar.htm

**********
End of Dee computer dreams up to 4-30-00

Please send in computer dreams and keep the digital dreaming research project going. rcwilk@dreamgate.com


COMPUTER DREAMS

Wilkerson, Richard Catlett (1999 August). Research Request: Computer's in Dreams : Pre and Post Internet Perceptions. Electric Dreams & Part I Pre-Net Electric Dreams 6(8). Retrieved October 30, 2000 from Electric Dreams on the World Wide Web: http://members.telocity.com/rcw666/ed-articles/richard_wilkerson_1999_aug_computers_in_dreams.htm

Wilkerson, Richard Catlett (2000 March). Digital Dreams: The changing (inter)face of dreams in the twenty-first century. Electric Dreams 7(3). Retrieved October 30, 2000 from Electric Dreams on the World Wide Web: http://members.telocity.com/rcw666/ed-articles/richard_wilkerson_2000_mar_computer-dreams1.htm

Wilkerson, Richard Catlett (2000 July). Digital Dreaming Series: Computer Dreams II : The changing (inter)face of dream texts. Electric Dreams 7(7). Retrieved October 30, 2000 from Electric Dreams on the World Wide Web: http://members.telocity.com/rcw666/ed-articles/richard_wilkerson_2000_july_computer-dreams2.htm

Wilkerson, Richard Catlett (2000 November). Digital Dreaming Series: Computer Dreams III :: The Digital Shift in Culture. Electric Dreams 7(11). Retrieved October 30, 2000 from Electric Dreams on the World Wide Web: http://members.telocity.com/rcw666/ed-articles/richard_wilkerson_2000_nov_computer-dreams3.htm

Wilkerson, Richard Catlett (2001 January). Digital Dreaming Series: Computer Dreams IV :: Dream Code and Decoded Flows. Electric Dreams 8(1). Retrieved December 31, 2000 from Electric Dreams on the World Wide Web: http://members.telocity.com/rcw666/ed-articles/richard_wilkerson_2001_jan_computer-dreams4.htm

Wilkerson, Richard Catlett (2001 May). Digital Dreaming Series: Computer Dreams V :: Emergence of Digital Imagery in Analog Dreamers. Electric Dreams 8(5). Retrieved May 1, 2001 from Electric Dreams on the World Wide Web: http://members.telocity.com/rcw666/ed-articles/richard_wilkerson_2001_may_computer-dreams5.htm

Wilkerson, Richard Catlett (2001 June). Digital Dreaming Series: Computer Dreams VI  ::  Digital Dreaming: Emergence or Replacement Imagery? Electric Dreams 8(6). Retrieved July 7, 2001 from Electric Dreams on the World Wide Web:
http://members.telocity.com/rcw666/ed-articles/richard_wilkerson_2001_june_computer-dreams6.htm