Just woke up, so this is coming right out of the subconscious terrain. But I'm not going to narrate it in my usual style. I'll just throw out what seem to be the important points.

My dream, essentially, was about the Content Collective, and Apple's attempt to eclipse it with a technically superier but proprietary technology.

No, that's not right. Apple didn't even know it existed. But they did independently come up with something very similar. Except theirs was mapped to a genuine representation of meatspace. Like a 3d version of Google Maps, with a Content-Collective-like texting feature layered on top.

In my dream, the long-considered 3d feature was also already present in my Content Collective -- I had solved the problem of how I wanted it to work, and done so, but none of it bore any relation to meatspace locations. But that was good, because that's how the Collective was meant to be.

But I was still impressed with what Apple had done, and wanted to see how their API worked, maybe even help improve it...

This is freakin bizarre. I'm just now recalling an entirely other subsection of the dream, in which Apple's platform was being used by a wealthy someday-to-be princess to recruit a mate. That shit is fucked up, man.

Or was it just some old guy trying to perpetrate yet another multi-level marketing scam, with my dad getting taken in by it as usual?

No, this doesn't make any sense, because the farther I delve, the less it will yield to any attempts to fit into the box of rational coherence. That's why attempting to retrofit a dream into a mere chronological narrative strips it of its depth.

So anyway, rather than try to tell an exhaustive story, I'll try to see what I can use from these pieces to access the neglected recesses of my consciousness.

Reality: The Content Collective, at this point, is in a state of virtual abandonment. With the rewrite of Bitscape's Lounge, I didn't even bother to include code to announce newly posted tiles to this site. I just didn't see much point. With some regret.

Reality: Google Maps makes me gasp in awe -- the fluidity and ease of the interface makes the Collective's "maps" navigation look like a goddamn Model T. After this dream, I'm now entertaining the amusing idea of attempting to harnass the Google API to make an interface that lets people post ContentCollective-like tiles onto real meatspace locations. But even if I were to do so, it wouldn't have the infinite chain of consciousness independence from real geography that's a hallmark of the Collective.

I'm not sure why Apple appeared in my dream. Maybe it's because it's a company that so often manages to piss me off while still being impressive in certain regards. (Unlike Microsoft, which almost always does nothing but the former, while Google excels at the latter.)

And going deeper back in... Well, I'm not even going to touch that right now.

Hmmmm... Well, even if I don't get around to doing any of the other more ambitious ideas, it wouldn't be a bad idea to put that part back in somehow. Just the recent announce tiles in a box here. Cause if that were already the case (as it once was), this entire entry might have come in the form of a batch of Content Collective tiles. Imagine that possibility.