In real life, I am a writer, and I occasionally use dreams for inspiration. I record almost every dream I have in a little black book.



When I am working on a story, I sometimes concentrate on a particular problem or character before I go to sleep, so that I will dream about them. It allows me to ask my subconscious (with its recklessly creative juxtapositions) questions about the story, and then I can dream up solutions.

About half the time the stuff I write when I wake up doesn't make any sense at all when I read it back, but sometimes it's golden.

I used this technique a few times over a period of two weeks to dream up a new technology. What did my subconscious come up with?


The ability to transmit and receive electrical power over distance, without cables.

The idea evolved as time went on. In my first dream I visualized futuristic airplanes that were able to stay in the air as long as required without fuel, because electrical power was being transmitted to them from the ground. In fact, any electrical gadget - from handheld torches to city monorails - could pick up power from one huge central transmitter.

The law of energy conservation means that the same amount of energy would still need to be produced, but there would no longer be any need for an infrastructure of cables and substations. Batteries would never need recharging, and fuel would be wasteful and expensive by comparison.

In my next dreams I focussed on how the technology worked. My subconscious surprised me by being quite clear on this one: Quantum Entanglement.

I must have read an article about quantum entanglement in an old Focus magazine. As far as I understand, it describes a phenomenon where twin quantum particles are created - matter and antimatter - and those particles are linked in some mysterious way that transcends space-time, so that if you act upon one of them, its twin also instantly reacts, even if they are far apart.

Anyway, in my dream these twin quantum particles were a little different. They were stable and large/numerous enough that they could be useful in the macro day-to-day world. And, even more unlikely, if you applied electrical energy to one of the particles its twin would also be electrified.

My subsequent dreams got far too involved in the mechanics of these super-particles, so I tried to pull it back and give some more thoughts to the societal implications of being able to broadcast electrical power. After all, it sounds like a potentially feasible technology even if it might have nothing to do with quantum entanglement.

However, my brain didn't seem very interested in the grander societal implications. Instead, it made the leap of faith that information (as well as electricity) could be transmitted using these entangled particles, and I started visualizing high-tech deep space probes. At this point I figured the dream technique had reached its limit, so time to share this with you guys!

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I am on a nigh-impossible mission to complete every single pure-EquivalenZ task by the end of the era. Prior tasks:

- Dodging
- Nintend0
- Correspond with a spammer
- Cellular Breakdown
- SFZero Text Updates
- Objectify a Subject
- Attachment Theory
- Bathe Electonics