Tools for dream typing
While trying any kind of sleep-typing, you probably want to use a keyboard like this:
This keyboard is missing every key that lets you delete words you’ve typed or otherwise send commands to the OS or text editor/messaging program you’re typing in (Ubuntu+ion3 and irssi here — your mileage may vary). When you drift off to unconscious sleep, it’s very easy to accidentally delete text, close the program, or other such counterproductive things.
It can be difficult to try to study something that by definition screws around with the thought processes you use to study it (I’m sure scientifically-minded drug-experimenter types would agree). But I have definitely had dreams where I was able to do some sciencey stuff while playing around — examining the simulated world to see how detailed it is (I wonder what rendering engine my brain uses …), testing what I can and can’t do in it, and so forth. Inevitably, since dreams are so hard to remember, I forget about the allure of the whole thing for long stretches of time. But eventually I have another vivid dream and start thinking about the possibility of playing around with a complete, realistic virtual world of my very own, and my inner SimCity player insists that I try it again.
Since dreams are so intangible when one’s awake, I don’t think that there’s any way for them to become a serious enough interest to detract from real life. But they’re a fascinating phenomenon and I’ve had fun when I’ve played around with them. Also, a few nights ago I had a long dream where I spent a lovely afternoon with Janeane Garofalo. And when the negative results of your experiment are “a lovely afternoon with Janeane Garofalo,” you have a good experimental design on your hands.
May 28th, 2007 at 2:27 am
Dear xkcd, I do hope you will set up your dream keyboard to automatically post to this blog at 8AM or whatever. It would be so entertaining.
May 28th, 2007 at 2:59 am
[...] xkcd » Blog Archive » Tools for dream typing [...]
May 28th, 2007 at 6:37 am
You scould also buy a graphic tablet and use some drawing software to do dream drawing !
I can’t wait to read an unconscious XKCD comic !
By the way, please refrain from posting any raptor-related dreams you might have, that would for sure prevent ME from sleeping ever again !
And if by any chance you meet a red haired talking unicorn, back off, it’s MINE !
P.S : Yipee ! My first comment on xkcd !
May 28th, 2007 at 7:59 am
Have you read the chapter of Surely you’re joking, Mr. Feynman! where he talks about how to develop the skill of taking control of your dreams? Quite an interesting fellow.
May 28th, 2007 at 8:13 am
Darn you and your lucid dreaming.
*jealousy*
I too look forward to an XKCD post directly from your unconscious/subconsious self ^_^
May 28th, 2007 at 8:24 am
Ah, lucid dreaming, hanging out with celebrities, being Spider-Man, such fun, such fun.
…
Ok I was just jealous of el-sio and wanted to post my first comment on xkcd too. Yay!
May 28th, 2007 at 8:44 am
You might rather want to use one of those five key, one handed keyboards. I imagine it would be pretty complicated to move your whole hand and hit the right buttons while being asleep…
May 28th, 2007 at 10:02 am
So, I don’t think I’ve ever dream-typed (well, maybe that would explain some college papers), but I have definitely been reading a book and dreamed several pages of text. I’ve also fallen asleep during movies, with my own plot line continuing in my dream, only to wake up later to be quite surprised.
May 28th, 2007 at 10:46 am
I remember, years ago, watching this one episode of Batman where the entire thing is a dream, and he figures it out because he opens a book and finds gibberish inside. There was some explanation about him dreaming with the right side of his brain while language processing happens in the left hemisphere. (I might be getting some details wrong, I was like 10 when I watched this.)
Now, if the Batman cartoons are in fact accurate (and they’ve never steered me wrong as yet), this might throw a wrench into your plans. I suggest you go into a lucid dream and ask the dark knight himself what he thinks.
May 28th, 2007 at 10:54 am
Okay, if you are able to pull this off, you MUST, and I repeat MUST give us detailed explanation of the training process. Imagine being able to IM someone between make-out sessions with oneself to give a first-hand account.
May 28th, 2007 at 11:12 am
quite a dreamy idea
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0243017/ should be mentioned here, for those unfamiliar
May 28th, 2007 at 12:06 pm
A little off topic, but you know you’ve been using wikipedia too much when you see a red link in the article and wonder why a broken link is there.
May 28th, 2007 at 6:20 pm
What would really be fun would be to work out a way to make a _two way_ communications channel.
Then you could have IMs sent from one dream to another. :)
“True Names” anyone? :)
May 28th, 2007 at 6:30 pm
I think simply recording yourself when you talk in your sleep may be easier. If you are a sleep-talker that is. But I really hope you’ll pull this off anyway… it’s really original :)
And I’d really like to see someone like you explore lucid dreaming (no newage-crap)
May 28th, 2007 at 6:43 pm
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Lucid_Dreaming … and it actually talks about text in books being scrambled as geekychic mentioned.
May 28th, 2007 at 9:01 pm
I actually did try the tape-recording thing once but the results were kind of unintelligible. But using a keyboard is certainly a really cool idea. It would probably be easy to get it to work for a hypnagogic state, but to get it working during your REM cycle might be tricky. I suppose you could train yourself by frequently typing out a description of your environment on an imaginary keyboard while you are awake until it became natural enough that you would do it unconciously … what do you guys think?
May 28th, 2007 at 10:14 pm
I tend to talk rather coherently during the most incoherent of dreams…
But Rob may be on to something, habit seems like the best way to deal with subconscious activity.
May 28th, 2007 at 10:34 pm
I’ve read in a few places that the best way to gain near-perfect dream recall is to get in the habit of writing down as much as you can remember when you wake up. Creative Dreaming by Patricia Garfield talks about how the author trained herself to wake up after each REM cycle, and had a system where she could write without looking at the pad so she wouldn’t have to wake up fully. It involved bracing her pinky against the notepad to keep her lines of text straight.
May 29th, 2007 at 2:37 am
It’s entirely possible - I once feel asleep in front of my lap top when I was trying to get started on a Uni paper…
I’d been running through the plot for a short story I wanted to write later on while I’d been at work all day, and then in my sleep basically typed out a really short, stream of consciousnesses synopsis of the story whilst dreaming about it.
Unfortunately my unconscious brain isn’t in very good control of my hands - spelling mistakes were abundant. Also, my sleeping mind has a tendency to use internet acronyms and the word ‘lol’.
It was messy.
I think the only reason it worked so well to such a degree for me is that I’m a full time author who spends most of his free time at a key board, and then of course there’s Uni work and instant messaging, alongside blogging.
So yeah, it’s a plausible concept. Just don’t expect perfect spelling and for your fingers to hit the right keys every time.
May 29th, 2007 at 3:08 am
The above comment reminded me that one time I was taking notes in class and I was so tired that I feel asleep while still typing! Unfortunately the result was gibberish. I woke up and looked at what I wrote and thought, “Huh?? ::backspace!::” I can’t remember how much the gibberish resembled real words. I wish I hadn’t deleted it! Too bad I didn’t have that keyboard. I wasn’t dreaming, but it still would have been interesting to reread.
May 29th, 2007 at 3:30 am
Heh, I saved mine…had to show it to my friends, it was just too damned freaky!
May 29th, 2007 at 8:51 am
Just wanted to add that it there has been experiments of dream to “real world” communication. Susan Blackmore has a quite a good article on it (and on Lucid dreaming in general):
http://www.susanblackmore.co.uk/Articles/si91ld.html
Quote:
“In one experiment with researchers Morton Schatzman and Peter Fenwick, in London, Worsley planned to draw large triangles and to signal with flicks of his eyes every time he did so. While he dreamed, the electromyogram, recording small muscle movements, showed not only the eye signals but spikes of electrical activity in the right forearm just afterward. This showed that the preplanned actions in the dream produced corresponding muscle movements”
May 29th, 2007 at 9:22 am
didn’t feynman do something like this?
and about the grape juice-raptor thing, where’d you squeeze the juice? all over yourself like with mosquito repellent?yuck. or at the Thing? where? do you wait till you can see the whites of its eyes?
*sigh* it’s just too hard. I’d rather stay holed up home.
oh and I heart xkcd.
May 29th, 2007 at 10:49 am
Isn’t this how Hollywood films are made?
May 29th, 2007 at 11:45 am
Way to plug Ubuntu! That’s my favorite pokemon too!
May 29th, 2007 at 5:05 pm
Lucid dreams are great. I remember once acknowledging that I don’t have to make physical effort to move, and I particularly like the way I can be spared from gravity at will.
May 29th, 2007 at 6:40 pm
I don’t usually know I’m dreaming, and can’t really fly, but sometimes I sort of swim through the air.
Speaking of interdream communication, lucid dreamers can sometimes meet at a specified place in their dreams, and have shared experience of things that happen in the dream. Whether they’re really communicating or just responding to a suggestion they agreed on beforehand is an exercise left to the dreamer.
May 29th, 2007 at 7:24 pm
I have printed this comic http://xkcd.com/c137.html I put it on my notebook .
I only had play with lucid dreams once and was fun… I need to do it again… and maybe left reallity for the matrix. Then I just hack to land phone line to tal to you guys… watch out for the attachements of the messages it could be a rapptor.exe.img :)
May 29th, 2007 at 9:48 pm
I did experience something somewhat like typing in my sleep. I had been typing something, and though I don’t remember what it is right now, I was tired and falling asleep as I did it with the TV on. What I tried to write turned out alright, save for I swapped a few names for those of characters of the show. I snapped out of it a moment later though.
May 29th, 2007 at 10:40 pm
My husband used to talk in his sleep a great deal - unfortunately the meds he takes to lessen his manic-depression, while improving his quality-of-life in most respects, seem to have dampened this aspect of it. Anyway, I used to tell him when he woke up (often from the sound of my laughter) what I’d heard, so he could remember.
Um, maybe I shouldn’t tell you this, but sometimes he dreamed he was a raptor. However, as a raptor, his main interest was making out with another raptor (i.e. me).
Oh, he also sang a lengthy song about flamingoes once.
May 30th, 2007 at 1:20 pm
As a lucid dreamer I can vouch for the scrambled text thing, it’s just one of the things you can use to check if you’re dreaming. For an entertaining stare-at-moving-images introduction, I recommend Waking Life as linked to above.
Otherwise Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming (oops http://www.megaupload.com/?d=TBZRY2G3 ) is a great introductory book on the topic, written by one of the topic’s pioneer researchers (modern science-type research, that is).
May 30th, 2007 at 9:03 pm
Lucid dreaming is very interesting to me. I had a lucid dream once in elementary school (In detention… I’d rather not discuss it). I didn’t know it at the time but it was a lucid dream, for a while at least. I didn’t know what it was called until I was looking through one of those useless-crap catalogues that has nothing but kitsch, and I found one of those Lucid Dreaming devices. Didn’t buy it, but I found the advertisement informative.
I honestly thought you were kidding in the comic. I don’t see a problem with the text, as most people don’t even LOOK at keyboards when they are typing. Since you are typing, not reading, there shouldn’t be any problems.
May 30th, 2007 at 11:09 pm
I once wrote an e-mail to a girl while I was blackout drunk, which is sort of similar. It looked like I typed it with my forehead.
May 31st, 2007 at 10:15 am
Supposedly you can listen to certain interfering tones, and your brain’s rhythm (”brainwaves”) will “entrain” to it, subtly changing your mood or making you sleepy or alert or whatever.
You can use an EEG to measure that rhythm, and then I guess when you connect the output of the EEG back into your headphones, it becomes biofeedback?
http://openeeg.sourceforge.net/
I’ve always wondered what would happen if two people wore such EEGs, but listened to each other’s brainwaves. What if the two people were sleeping next to each other?
May 31st, 2007 at 10:45 am
I fell asleep once watching a movie in Japanese, and the dialogue switched to english… It didn’t make a bit of sense, but maybe that’s what they were really saying! The subtitles lie!
May 31st, 2007 at 4:39 pm
I wonder what would happen during a wet dream….
May 31st, 2007 at 5:55 pm
I once had a very lucid dream, I got a phone call from a friend of mine & my partners.
In this dream, I said “You want to talk to her? Yeah, she’s here. I’ll just pass you over.” - I got the call on a mobile, of course.
At this point, I woke up, to find my partner looking at me a bit funny, as it seems I’d actually said the words out loud, and had my hand cupped as if I were holding the phone, outstretched to give to her.
Could always try sleep-SMSing…
June 1st, 2007 at 12:44 am
I have a real problem. I can answer phonecalls while im sleeping! I talk normally and all, and when I wake up I kind of remember that someone called me on a dream. My best friend called me some years ago and we spend 2 hours talking, when I woke up I called her and asked her if I did speak to her and what did I say.. I could only remember talking to her, not the content :s
I still do, it freaks me out!
What would I do if I could also do that typing on msn?? Better not think about it.
P.S: The spam protection keeps telling me that the sum of 5+10 is not 15. Maybe im dreaming on 15?
June 1st, 2007 at 3:13 pm
>I have a real problem.
Pfff.. Just do a reality check and you’ll see even this is not real.
There. 5+10.
Happened to me once.. I picked up the phone, and the guy calling wanted to know where some keys to the jail cells were. Call was at 4:00 am on a saturday night.
I was into Chrono Trigger or Zelda at the time.. good thing I didn’t start “you’ll need to take the stairs on the left of the castle, then kill the two guards with the morning star and use your boomerang to…”.
I just mumbled that I didn’t have the keys and hung up.
(My dad was the Sargent at that police station.. made sense they called him, but he was away on a ski trip at the time)
June 2nd, 2007 at 3:08 am
The “Powers of Ten” reference indirectly linked you to Will Wrights “Spore”.
You just entered an entirely new sphere of awesome.
June 2nd, 2007 at 1:03 pm
I’m getting better at recognizing my dreams. Last night I had a fairly normal dream about eating with some friends, when some weird things started to happen. So I started testing to see if it was a dream.
Test 1: I tried reading small numbers. Asked one of my friends to show me his watch. I actually passed this test. I could read the numbers. Later I realized though that I didn’t actually see a time, just the numbers.
Test 2: I wasn’t convinced though, so I tried writing something down. I started writing some random words, and I noticed I made a lot more mistakes than I do when I’m awake. Writing is hard in your dreams. Also I notice my handwriting was different. So I started to get the feeling I was dreaming after all. So I did the final test…
Test 3: Try moving stuff with your mind. This always works for me when I’m dreaming, but by now I know that when I can do it it 100% certainly is a dream. Alas…
June 2nd, 2007 at 2:48 pm
The best and simplest way to get lucid in a dream is to get in the habit of pulling your finger at random times during the day AND when something out of the ordinary happens. When you do it, really concentrate hard and ask “is this a dream” and pull your finger to see if it stretches like taffy. The idea is that if you do it often in real life, it will carry over to the dream.
If you manage to realize you’re dreaming, immediately spend 15-30 seconds concentrating on studying the details of your entire hand, this improves the clarity and the length of time of the dream.
If you start to feel like your dream is slipping, hold on to an object like a chair or a person and concentrate really hard on making the dream state stable.
As far as remembering dreams, there are two things I do. In the dream I will spend time concentrating on the details of what just happened. And I have objects that I associate dreams with. In this case, my computer mouse. So if I dreamt I was spiderman, I would think of bashing spiderman’s head in with a mouse.
Then when I wake up, I don’t move and I immediately think of what my dream was about. If that doesn’t work, then I think about what memory my mouse is associated with. If that doesn’t work, then throughout the day I will try to recall the dream going back to those methods.
I didn’t realize you could type in a dream, I thought the only thing you could have any real control over was your eye movement.
June 3rd, 2007 at 12:39 am
The TCMP doesn’t take into account REM atonia… basically, when you’re in REM sleep, you’re paralyzed and can’t exactly move your fingers. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/REM_atonia#Physiology_of_REM_sleep and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_paralysis .
June 3rd, 2007 at 1:11 am
I read about this device once — it’s a set of goggles with LED’s that point right at your eyes. The idea is that it automatically (either by timer, or by being hooked up to an EEG to monitor when you hit theta waves — the latter being much more accurate, but the former being much less expensive) flashes the LEDs when you enter your REM states.
I don’t know this for sure, since I’ve never done it, but it’s supposed to somehow help you “wake up” in your dream.
I imagine setting it up wouldn’t be terribly hard if you were just doing the timer. Most people enter REM sleep after about 4 or 5 hours. That still doesn’t solve the keyboarding issue though….
June 3rd, 2007 at 8:10 am
Re: Waking Life; http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0354899/ (La Science des rêves, or The Science of Sleep) should also definitely get a mention here — there are several examples of how to move between sleep and wakefulness :)
June 3rd, 2007 at 5:26 pm
I read about an experiment:
Apparently even the most sensitive instruments could barely detect differences in finger pressure made by a lucid dreamer attempting to type (they used eye movements to signal attempts). So on a real keyboard, you’re out of luck—unless you’re actually sleepwalking (which is entirely unconscious and probably what most of these “I did it!” posters experienced). The body is paralyzed when you dream (ever wake up before your body did, and couldn’t move?).
I’ll agree with Anon1’s recommendation of Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming, by Stephen LaBerge. It’s a good place to start. Here’s his website, which contains some quantitative experiments and articles: http://www.lucidity.com/
Awesome comics, by the way!
PS: if any of you reading this have questions, I happen to know a lot about sleep and dreaming, including interpreting. I’m a gmail user: Vi.Hart
June 3rd, 2007 at 8:00 pm
[...] out there rmunroe is listening, I just know it… Posted by The Bagel of Everything Filed in hobbies, comics, [...]
June 3rd, 2007 at 8:08 pm
You should consider getting Optimus keyboard then (hhttp://www.artlebedev.com/everything/optimus/). Costs a fortune though.
June 4th, 2007 at 8:53 pm
Yeah, it works really great, until you try to teach your subconscious mind dvorak.
*sigh*
June 4th, 2007 at 9:57 pm
Anonymous hero, I don’t see how the Optimus Maximus keyboard would help. Care elaborating?
June 4th, 2007 at 11:07 pm
Ion3! Now I can say “Hey, I use the same window manager as the dude who writes xkcd.”
June 5th, 2007 at 9:09 am
@Andy: Yes, that was hasty, I did miss the point of the original.
June 5th, 2007 at 9:48 am
“I don’t usually know I’m dreaming, and can’t really fly, but sometimes I sort of swim through the air.”
I used to to do this all the time when I was a kid (in my dream, obviously). The problem was it felt so.. REAL, the way I flew, that I was very upset when I couldn’t do it for real :(
And regarding lucid dreams… my phone background is normally black text on white: “ARE YOU DREAMING?”, on account of me checking that about 17 times an hour.
June 5th, 2007 at 12:02 pm
What is the message behind your linux comic?
June 5th, 2007 at 9:35 pm
Linux is awesome and in your face. ;D
June 5th, 2007 at 10:19 pm
So, about the Batman comment. I’m terrible at riddles but has anyone else noticed how lame the riddles from The Riddler are? Almost as bad as that one in “Da Vinci Code” about an apple.
Of course this is coming from someone who didn’t understand “what’s black, white, and read all over?” until she was 16.
June 7th, 2007 at 3:23 pm
memento: thanks - I ordered the DVD of the movie, it arrived today - a very odd film and I enjoyed it very much.
June 8th, 2007 at 9:40 am
What was so cool about the keyboard (and the comic) was that I’ve actually woken up and found myself typing. I found my fingers going in the same pattern and I realized I was typing out keywords in my online conversations. So, the terms ‘LOL’, ‘Hell no’ and ‘Try Google - not me’ came up a lot (I had to figure out which invisible keys my fingers were going for.)
Sometimes, when my friends are talking, I transcript them on my knee by typing what they say with my fingers. It’s even funnier when I subconsciously hit the backspace button when I know I hit a key wrong, even though there’s no evidence.
June 8th, 2007 at 5:44 pm
Vi says: “The body is paralyzed when you dream (ever wake up before your body did, and couldn’t move?).”
Ugh… been there. It was absolutely terrifying.
It’s really really weird, because you can see everything, but can’t move, and you start feeling that you’re trapped.
(And I was like that for nearly half an hour. The first thing I did when I could move again was scream.)
I’m one of those people who doesn’t wake up gradually like most other people do. It’s like, BOOM, and I’m awake.
And also, I’ve found that I can type slightly better with my eyes shut than with them open. I wonder if I can type in my sleep…
Hmmm…. Now there seems to be an interesting project… train myself to use my PC while asleep… heh heh…
June 10th, 2007 at 4:55 am
I suffer from Sleep Paralysis (mind wakes up before the body) and Hypnagogic Hallucinations (kinda like the opposite, except you’re dreaming and pretty sure you’re awake) on alternating occasions.
Sleep Paralysis is completely useless, it’s scary at first but once you know what it is it’s like “damnit, hurry up and move, I need to pee.”
But Hypnagogic Hallucinations are very useful, I find that I can move during these, because whilst having a bad dream in this state, I can thrash about etc. So why not type?
June 11th, 2007 at 11:36 pm
It might be a good idea to open the keyboard and remove the plungers for undesired keys, as sometimes one’s pinky might slip into a hole.
June 13th, 2007 at 1:21 am
While my dreams are very vivid, I can rarely remember them. THey also seem to be slightly nonsensical. One of the most realistic ones I had involved walikng down a valley, over a bridge, and into an old house, which was being used as a school. Possibly the wiedet dream I had was immediately after moving into the city where I now live, and I saw a short clip of the inside of a shopping mall in teh background to a news report (the mall in question is connected to the concourse of the railway station, which the reoprt was about), and dreamed I was beig chased by a giant iced coffee carton down that mall. I had never seen it before (having moved from overseas), and yet when i walked down that mall a few days later it was almost perfect, everything that could have been seen from where the camera was. Something like this would be good for me, as I can never remember my dreams except in a few circumstances.
June 13th, 2007 at 8:27 am
I once started to drift off to sleep in the middle of an IM sessions and mid sentence broke off then typed “i want some fires” because someone in my dream had fries… it was a freak accident and something i have not since been able to replicate.
June 14th, 2007 at 12:49 pm
Although I’ve never typed in my sleep, during uni I have managed to fall fast asleep for an entire lecture yet wake up with a full set of notes in front of me. The content was dubious at best in the details, but accurate in the overall subject and the handwriting messy, but clearly my own. I fully expect to wake up having typed something one of these days after falling asleep in front of the computer.
June 18th, 2007 at 5:40 pm
Ummm…doesn’t dreaming usually occur during REM sleep?
and isn’t that when the brain locks up most bodily functions so that you can’t move your hands, legs, mouth, etc?
so doesn’t that sorta rule out dream typing?
sorry to spoil the idea…
June 19th, 2007 at 4:42 pm
Recommended Reading
What good reading can be found on Internet? Interesting links for lucid dreaming.
June 22nd, 2007 at 7:36 pm
Funny I should read this today… I awoke this morning (2 pm) after a bizzare series of dreams involving cannolli, voting booths, miniature mandolins and Star Jones (when she was still fat). After I woke I noticed as most people do how quickly these things slip away from us. And like any megalomaniac I thought about how amazing my dreams were and what magnificent novel/film fodder they would make. So sign me the fuck up and I’ll give you a cut of my royalties.
June 27th, 2007 at 1:37 am
I have never communicated a dream when sleeping, but I have done some interesting things while at least mostly asleep, such as make weird graphics, text documents with 4000+lines of “sssssssssssssss”, and probably most awesome, install ubuntu. Only problem was that I couldn’t recall my username or password, which meant I had to start over anyway. This of course is all aside from random calls I make at 4am, oh and telling those lucky few who actually pick up “how lucky they are that I called them”.
June 28th, 2007 at 2:11 am
Speaking of unconscious comics, you might want to check out Rick Veitch’s Rare Bit Fiends if you haven’t already. http://www.amazon.com/Rabid-Eye-Veitch-Collected-Fiends/dp/0962486418
July 6th, 2007 at 6:37 am
That can’t normally work. Conscious body movement is inhibited during REM sleep.
July 23rd, 2007 at 4:47 am
I nodded off a few time while doing paper work at my old job. My hand kept moving even though I was asleep but it didn’t resemble any real words, or even any letters (Pencil and paper, not type writer) But I wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t woken up each time I nodded off. I need to take a week end to play with this and see if my sleeping mind can produce legiable writing. so far I seem to be doing well for 4:46 AM and yes, I know my spelling is atrocious.
July 25th, 2007 at 12:57 pm
I hardly remember any of my dreams, and I don’t think I have had any lucid dreams at all. The most recent dream that I can really remember was I think from over a year ago. It was sort of weird. My alarm clock next to my bed was going off and I dreamed that I pressed the button. The beeping continued. I pressed it multiple times furiously and even unplugged it from the wall, but it didn’t stop beeping. I took it outside on the deck, placed it on a chair (no cushion), and smashed it repeatedly with a hammer. Then I slowly began to realize that my right hand was, in fact, hanging limp at my side, and not being used to smash a clock that still hadn’t stopped beeping. It was still beeping because I had never even pressed the button, much less unplugged it and started smashing it with a hammer.
Strange dream. I guess my subconscious mind wanted me to get a little more sleep before waking up.
I also remember a little about a dream that took place in a building that I think was sort of like a cross between an airport, a hospital, and my elementary school. It had something to do with fluorescent lights and mind control.
I really can’t remember any dreams besides those two, or at least not at the moment. I think there were one or two others that I did remember when I was awake, but that I have now forgotten.
August 6th, 2007 at 3:52 pm
You won’t be able to right during REM sleep because the brain stem causes a muscular atony (to prevent you from moving while you’re dreaming of fights and all).
BTW the loss of such muscular atony during REM sleep may be a symptom of Parkinson disease.
August 9th, 2007 at 12:20 am
I posted a link to your sleep comic on http://geeksleep.blogspot.com
Later, one of the contributers had a dream about using a laptop to log his dream.
August 10th, 2007 at 1:16 pm
I thought this was a joke at first. You can actually type during your sleep? I’m a pretty big nerd but I don’t think I’ve ever managed THAT. Lol.
August 11th, 2007 at 8:51 pm
As one who constantly dwells on the fantastic and imaginary, I really wish I had more vivid dreams and the skills to examine them. I’ve never had a lucid dream, and I can’t yet type well enough to do your experiment (I can’t do the standard style of typing, and it’s freaking hard to learn after you’ve been doing it the wrong way for so long). I envy you.
August 14th, 2007 at 1:46 pm
Wow…what a concept…..but I think a voice to text set-up with a simple single button microphone queue would be more productive. BTW: I would have to put a drool screen on my keyboard……sad to day I suppose.
August 15th, 2007 at 9:10 pm
Look into the drug DMT. It’s what (according to white coats) causes the actual dreams. Unfortunately, it’s illegal to obtain :D. Have a great day!
—kay
August 17th, 2007 at 6:41 pm
Removing the ability to unconsciously delete actually impedes our progress. You should make it so that it alerts/leaves a symbol whenever someone attempts to delete what they have written — rather than not letting them delete at all. Self-editing is a big part of any blog. We won’t be able to understand what exactly they wanted to keep or get rid of and that could be a huge criticism.
August 17th, 2007 at 6:58 pm
PS. Finally, psychology and neurology. Something a liberal arts major can understand on this website. xD
September 10th, 2007 at 4:26 pm
Wow, if you can pull that off it’d be pretty neat. The closest I came was when I was up all night trying to write a paper for class. It was getting bright out and I nodded off while typing. When I woke up again, I had apparently written a passage about golden octopii sitting on a fence with an apple and bowler hat. The class was about Hymalayan life. xP
September 17th, 2007 at 3:58 am
http://www.dreamviews.com Helpful guide to lucid dreaming.
September 20th, 2007 at 7:25 am
Hum … don’t forget that in your dream the left part of your brain is disconnected of your right brain part. This why you never see you in a dream reading something.
September 30th, 2007 at 10:40 pm
I, for one, have read many times in dreams. It probably helps that I tend to be an avid reader while awake, making it a “natural” activity while asleep.
Or, I could have an oddly wired brain.
October 1st, 2007 at 1:06 pm
I do have an oddly wired brain, and do not have this “muscular atony”. Or at least the inclination I have to not move while dreaming is easily overcome by the power of suggestion (I’m very suggestible while asleep).
My friends abuse this fact to no end.
I also have those hypnagogic hallucinations which can rarely be frightening but are usually super-awesome. I can narrate them with no problem, though it does require a sort of mental disconnect. I can and do narrate regular dreams upon request as well (though I’ll never remember it the next morning). So I could probably do the typing thing… I’ll have to try it.
October 17th, 2007 at 12:37 am
This was kind of cool. I’ve recently had issues with sleeptyping, being a pwn for 13 years. While it’s not new to me.. I’ve learned recently that if you type a message you don’t mean.. or are hallucinating about.. or in the middle of… and send it to someone you shouldn’t - you are still responsible.. sigh. I highly recommend adding to your picture by locking up the mouse. That will allow the typing and you CAN’T hit send!! woohoo. Just more food for thought.
Hey - Emporer Z - let me please tell you - NO - you DON’T. I’ve had what’s known as hypnogogic hallucinations for 13 years - all 5 senses are active during the dream state, and I am awake and dreaming simultaneously, sometimes for a moment, sometimes for an entire 4 or 5 hour dream sequence. And, I can assure you, while some of it is cool (I LOVE flying), be very sure to understand that lucid dreaming is more realistic than what schizophrenics go through….. imagine being trapped in a nightmare. Imagine waking up from a nightmare, into a nightmare, into a nightmare - and at each stage, when you’re sure you’re finally awake and you get up to move around - and the unthinkable happens to you- and just before the most frightening thing you can imagine occurs, you wake up again.. lay there… and wonder if you’re actually awake. Imagine hearing voices of those you love call out, talk to them… and nobody’s there. Wake up and wonder why your family’s in the living room making a dang rackit when you’re trying to sleep - and you look at the clock to see it’s 3:00 am… plus, now you have to lock every door and window air tight - because you can hear them open, witness someone coming in - and there may be no one there at all.
It’s fun sometimes - but i don’t think you oughtta try it. GHB can cause it better than any other drug, and it is legal - but you gotta have a dang good reason to get it, since it’s also known as the date rape drug and foundation for ecstasy.
October 17th, 2007 at 12:44 am
To Steph and a few others who mentioned paralysis during REM - you’re right, almost. While we are paralyzed, sleepwalking can be an exception, as can Hypnogogic hallucinations. The deal is, REM is its own stage of sleep, and is supposed to kick in after deep sleep to ensure that paralysis takes place. Narcolepsy for instance, we can fall asleep anywhere from 1 to 100 times a day for various lengths of time, but we can drop into REM before that happens, and may be awake. Also, during periods of automatic behavior, while we are unconscious, we have passed the ‘falling asleep’ stage, straight to the unconscious stage just before REM, but still able to move. It’s sucky, and yet fun. Gotta take the good with the bad I suppose. But no - you can move while you dream. It’s unheard of because all the facts of narcolepsy and other sleep disorders are still rare. And nobody does any studies on it yet - because nobody understands it yet. Sigh…
October 30th, 2007 at 1:00 pm
How To Start A Blog…
I couldn’t understand some parts of this article, but it sounds interesting…
November 1st, 2007 at 1:04 am
woh… munroe… i hope you check these comments…
i freaked out for a little, because i had a dream about jeanene garofalo, and that was the most random thing ever, and i thought it might have been a coincident occurence, but yours happened in may, and mine on january 10 (i was keeping a dream journal at the time)
anyway, it’s probably nothing magical, probably just chance, but it was at least worth mentioning.
i think it would be an interesting experiment, though, to work on getting lucid (according to many, a dream journal helps, in which one rights down one’s previous night’s dreams), and then learning to type in the dream… maybe it could even be productive - getting work done while sleeping! how sweet…
November 3rd, 2007 at 9:02 pm
I used to do a lot of mapping of small objects from aerial images into a GIS database, which meant clicking many points on polygons. It was pretty tedious and a couple of times I fell asleep while still clicking and would draw silly shapes.
Sadly I deleted them as soon as I realized i was dreaming (usually by the fact that I was having a conversation with someone who shouldn’t be there) and woke up.
March 18th, 2008 at 6:12 am
[...] http://blag.xkcd.com/2007/05/28/tools-for-dream-typing/#comment-4911 [...]
April 26th, 2008 at 1:24 am
I’m not sure if I could sleep-type, even in the shallow dream states outside REM, where the neurotransmitter paths to muscle action are not shut off. I think it would be interesting to map emotional states while I sleep and see if I could find ways of guiding my thoughts while asleep toward imagining enjoyable things. I have found it too easy in life during difficult times to have sleep become not an escape, but perhaps a practice ground for bad thoughts. I have used one of my own inventions to monitor and record nighttime teeth grinding and clenching, which I assume is an emotional indicator. Are there EEG emotional indicators? It would be cool to be able to track emotions in REM, when the physical muscle manifestations are not available.
June 29th, 2008 at 5:09 pm
fun flicks…
As you seem to know what your doing blogging wise, do you know what the best time of the week is to blog and have them read?…