Researchers and sleep experts are worried about a marketing tactic that puts advertisements in your dreams.
According to a recent survey, 77 percent of marketers plan to use dreamtech advertising in the next three years, and a trio of researchers at Harvard, MIT and the University of Montreal published an essay on dream hacking in Aeon warning that.
Multiple marketing studies are testing new ways to alter and drive purchasing behavior through sleep and dream hacking. The commercial, for-profit use of dream incubation is rapidly becoming a reality.
Two of the essay's authors previously worked on an MIT device designed to communicate with sleeping subjects and even "hack" their dreams, lending them credibility on the topic.
They were concerned about an ad campaign by the company that promised free beer in exchange for participation in a video with dancing beer cans and talking fish. The scientists pointed out that the phrase "targeted dream incubation" was used by two of the three authors of the 2020 paper, meaning that advertisers are keeping an eye on academic work on dream hacking.
All three wrote an open letter that criticized advertisers. The document was signed by forty other scientists. The writers argued that the Federal Trade Commission should update rules against subliminal messages in advertising to prevent dream hacking.
It is important to act before it is too late, because dream incubation has practical uses and it is only a matter of time before tech companies that make watches, Wearables, apps and other technology that monitor sleep start to sell.
The study found that mixing bad smells with cigarette smoke reduced smoking the next day, but they couldn't remember smelling anything.
It is a call to regulate the tech before it matures.
The researchers wrote that the dream advertisement was a signal that what was once the stuff of science fiction might become reality. We are now on a slippery slope. Where we go depends on what actions we take to protect our dreams.
After the Backlash, Pepsi said it never planned a space billboard.
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