Posthuman Blues

I had an interesting "visionary" experience while drifting to sleep last night. It was similar to other recent episodes in that it had the feel of a lucid dream (although I was awake with my eyes open) but different insofar as it seemed like I was interacting with an actual technology of some kind.

In front of my face, at reading distance, there appeared to be multiple rows of compressed text, each word encapsulated in an ellipse. Each row moved rapidly from the right to the left -- too fast for me to make out any sort of narrative, but acutely responsive, so that I could visually choose a specific word-balloon and have it persist for a moment before vanishing -- instantly replaced by a stream of words with similar connotations. It was like looking into the mind of a language database or some futuristic heads-up display word processor. It also had the feel of a timed quiz or test of some sort; I can see something like it eventually becoming a high-bandwidth Web application. If I knew how to write Flash, I could probably craft a pretty good approximation.

Perhaps significantly, I seem to have experienced increased hypnogogic phenomena like this since I suffered a retinal occlusion a few months ago, temporarily blotting out the sight in my right eye. Maybe my retina (technically, part of the brain) healed with heightened sensitivity to the phosphene activity most people experience when they close their eyes in a dark room. My subconscious could be amplifying ocular "noise," allowing me to experience certain dream imagery while not fully asleep.