.. something slightly weird.
Which is not, of course, to say that most dreams aren't weird. But still.
In this dream, I went to visit Google Australia, who'd just moved into a new premises. For some reason, the building was Market City - aka Paddy's Market - in Haymarket, Sydney. I went in the company of Dave The Happy Singer, his partner Jasmine, and a couple of colleagues from my current job.
After some faffing around with security clearances and so on, during which Dave committed the faux pas of spilling his coffee into an important - but innocuous looking - computer case, we proceeded inwards to the workspace, which for some reason was a huge, open plan affair looking not unlike a giant trade show.
In different workspaces, happy and industrious teams toiled away on all manner of weird stuff. In one, a tailor's dummy was being fitted with some kind of smart fabric outfit which wouldn't look out of place in Blake's Seven and probably did fantastic Personal Area Network and biomonitoring stuff. In another, a team were playing around with remote controlled cars. In yet another, flying drones. There were bikes, computers, musical instruments, coffee machines and all manner of other objects undergoing revolutionary ideafication in this space. It was like the future was being built.
For some reason, when we entered, everyone shouted "Irrashaimase!".
Jasmine was taken aside for an interview. We wandered for a while among mystifying weirdness. There were teams trying to teach robots to create impressionist masterpieces in oils. Other teams tinkered with 3D printers, test tubes, microscopes and petri dishes. We crashed out on some giant beanbags - which were probably GPS-linked and cloud-controlled or some such nonsense, until Jasmine returned and another member of the group was taken aside
This continued until it was my turn. I was taken off into a side room, lit with red light and containing someone trying to capture the essence of the light on a blank canvas with some unknown combination of mixed media and a swathe of CCD devices and digital cameras. My interviewer and I apologised for the intrusion, and moved away to one side.
My interviewer, who I vaguely recognised and was probably some chap off the TV, confided to me in a worried whisper:
"Look, it's like this. None of us have the faintest fucking clue what we're doing"
"Yeah", I replied, slightly distracted "I thought this might be the case"
"It's mad, but we just do stuff, and people give us money, and we use the money to do other stuff. And while we're doing it, the world changes. But there's no actual clue here what or why we're doing it."
"I think it's great" I said.
"So do I. It worries me like hell, but I love it." replied my interviewer "So, anyway... do you want in?"
At this point, I woke up, feeling irrationally annoyed with the world, but kind of fired up. So I had breakfast, rode a 50km work-avoiding 'commute' and tried to figure out why I was so annoyed by all this.
And I don't know.
But I have a feeling I should be doing something.
So I blogged it.
It hasn't entirely helped, but I think I'm getting there. Watch this space. Something might happen.