their genetics broken down and backdated for centuries, or follow their stress levels through a family holiday. But while our waking moments become ever more transparent, the one-third of our life spent asleep has remained off limits.
Throughout history,
dreams have proved resistant to interrogation. It is not known why we
sleep at all beyond a general need to recharge and avoid the negative
consequences of not sleeping, while an explanation for the substance of
dreams has proved even more elusive, still dominated by the theories of
wish fulfillment espoused by Freud and Jung.
But now, digital innovations are picking up the challenge.
The Shadow app
seeks to connect users with their dreams, and to make them sociable.
Its first function is as an alarm clock that wakes the user gradually
over up to 30 minutes, easing them into consciousness so as to preserve
more of the dream state, rather than shattering it abruptly. Dream researchers estimate that 95% of dreams vanish upon awakening.
Once the user touches
their phone it begins recording and invites them to share the
still-fresh memories of the night, prompting them with questions. The
input is scanned for keywords and patterns so that the user can build a
picture of their experiences over time.
More ambitiously, their
personal data is anonymized and sent with gender and geographic data to
cloud servers in the hope of building a global dream database. In this
social network people can compare and discuss their experiences, while
trends can be identified and analyzed.
Source:CNN
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