Have you had the dream?

If you've had the dream, you will know it.

• Strings, tubes, wrinkles, branches, or flowing lines..
• Massive
• Small
• The dot

You probably had it multiple times, and it probably started when you were young. It may have been while you were asleep. It may have been while you had a fever. It may have sometimes been a waking dream, like a trance.

You've often wondered what the dream was. and if anyone else had it.

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We are looking for others who have had the dream.

Tell us about your dream.

• What did you see, or what was happening, in the dream? It might defy words, but try.
• How did the dream make you feel?
• How old were you when you first remember having the dream? How many times would you guess that you had it? Did you stop having it at some point in your life?

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The rules:

Send an email to: ihadthedream@gmail.com Describe your dream.

We probably won't write back for awhile. We need time to collect dreams and compare them.

We won't publish comments that describe the dream, because we want people to describe it in their own words. If they see yours, it might change or influence their memories.

We may share your dream (anonymously) with someone else and ask them if your dream sounds like theirs, or not. We may send you someone else's dream (without sharing their name) and ask you if it sounds like yours, or not.

After we build up a collection of dreams that we think are the same, we may post them (anonymously) on our blogs.

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Have you had the dream?

Jane McGonigal & Ze Frank

Take the Outlier Challenge

This week from the Institute for the Future and the Signtific Lab: it's the third and final trial in our Free Space trilogy!

Free Space: How to invent the future by playing in the Signtific Lab

View more presentations from avantgame. (tags: 2009 iftf)

The experiment (PLAY NOW!)starts at 7 PM Pacific Time Monday March 9, and ends 2 PM Pacific Time Thursday March 11.

Join the lab or log in now!

The experiment is headquartered at Etech 09 -- but you're welcome to play with us at Etech from wherever in the world you happen to be!

For this final trial, we're issuing the Outlier Challenge. Here are the guidelines! (originally published on the Signtific Lab blog.)

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Here at the Signtific Lab, we love outliers. That's why we want you to take the Outlier Challenge.

In future forecasting terms, outliers are the most surprising ideas. They are what scientists call "non-obvious", and they're the opposite of "wisdom of the crowds" consensus. They take the crowd by surprise. Outliers might not be the most likely ideas, but they would have a huge impact if they actually occurred. They're especially hard to see coming, but when they do come, they disrupt everything -- precisely because so few people anticipated them.

The main benefit of a platform like the Signtific Lab is that we can expose each other to many more outliers -- and avoid getting blindsided by the future.

To help you uncover new outliers, we've created the Outlier Challenge. Your mission: Avoid "Outlier Fail" and steer towards "Outlier Win."

OUTLIER FAIL
This is a list of apparently obvious ideas about the future of free space. We call them "outlier fail", because they have shown up literally 100 times or more in our forecast feed. You can feel free to create new micro-forecasts about these ideas, but you'd better say something extremely surprising if you want to avoid the outlier fail! Don't just tell us this stuff will happen. We've got that already. Can you say anything surprising or non-obvious about these topics? If not, AVOID! AVOID! AVOID!

• Junk in space
• Falling junk from space
• Porn in space
• Terrorists in space
• Stalking from space
• Reality TV from space

OUTLIER WIN
This is a list of the topic we think have the most potential for non-obvious ideas about the future of free space. So use these as springboards to surprise yourself and the other Lab members. The more you explore any of these topics, and the deeper you get down the chain of forecasts, the more potentially outlier you'll get! WANT! WANT! WANT!

* DIY space research
* Crowdsourced eco-monitoring
* Disaster spotting & response
* Hacking democracy
* Cubesat entrepreneurs
* Social capital in space
* News from space
* Serious games in space
* Climate change applications
* Food/agriculture innovation
* Chemical/materials research
* Bio/life sciences research
* Oceanographic research
* Tracking and protecting all living things (migration patterns, etc)
* MOST IMPORTANTLY: STUFF WE PROBABLY NEVER THOUGHT OF OURSELVES!