Laila Lalami's novel imagines a world where dreams can land you in jail

After oversleeping one morning, writer Laila Lalami noticed a notification on her phone telling her the exact time she'd arrive at her yoga studio. 

"I had never told Google what day of the week or what time of day or even that I went to yoga," she said on Bookends with Mattea Roach. "But of course, over time, the company had picked up my habits and followed my movements and it had decided, perhaps helpfully, to remind me that I was running late and I had better leave."

In that moment, the somewhat invisible data collection of our technological devices became apparent to Lalami — and led her to ask questions that sparked the idea of her book, The Dream Hotel.

"I turned to my husband and I said, pretty soon the only privacy any of us will have left will be in our dreams. And of course, being a novelist, I thought, 'Well, what if someday this data collection penetrates the world of dreams?'"

In her novel The Dream Hotel, a device that's supposed to help people sleep also harvests data about their dreams. This becomes one way that the government decides if someone's likely to commit a crime. 

When Sara, the novel's protagonist, is flagged as high risk, she's sent to a retention centre with other women trying to prove their innocence — and fight for their freedom.

Lalami joined Roach on Bookends to examine the intimacy of dreams and the invisible power of surveillance technology. 

Mattea Roach: What is your relationship with your own dreams?

Laila Lalami: I am a very active dreamer. I tend to remember my dreams and they are often one of the things that I discuss first thing over breakfast when I'm having coffee with my husband. When talking about how we slept, oftentimes a dream that I've had will come up and then we talk about it and I've always found them to be an interesting window into the kinds of things that preoccupy me — and sometimes that can be extremely banal. 

I am a very active dreamer.- Laila Lalami

So for example, every single semester for the last 18 years that I've been teaching, the night before the first day of classes, I dreamed that I forgot my lecture notes.

I know it's an expression of anxiety.

It's not particularly interesting, but then every once in a while I have a dream that can be very revealing or very affecting or terrifying or exciting or humorous and those I enjoy remembering and discussing.

The dream data in your story is harvested from this device that's a commercial product that was bought and installed by people who wanted to sleep better. This is something that people voluntarily chose to have implanted, with some knowledge that their data could be used and shared with third parties. What did you want to explore in that territory?

I'm one of those people — and I'm sure many of your listeners are as well — if you're in a rush, you're trying to download something and it shows you the terms and conditions, you just click accept and you move on. Convenience trumps our concerns about privacy. 

We know that data is being collected, but because that collection is made invisible and because the convenience that these phones deliver to our lives is so large, then we just accept it. The problem is that incrementally, that data collection has increased to a level that is unprecedented in human experience.

The problem is that incrementally, that data collection has increased to a level that is unprecedented in human experience.- Laila Lalami

If you traveled back in time and said, "I have a device that can tell you what every citizen in your country, their location at any one time, every letter that they write, every picture that they take — I have a way of accessing all of this for you."

If it happened overnight, you'd be like, "Whoa, what is this totalitarian system? What is this system that we have?" But because it happened very slowly over the course of 25 years, and because these phones deliver so much convenience to our lives we just let it happen. 

My mother lives in Morocco, and I can talk to her and I can see her face while I'm talking to her, which is very important. She's hard of hearing so there's just a lot of convenience. 

I think that the amount of data that is being collected right now is truly unprecedented. I don't think we have reckoned with it.

How do you see technology playing a role in all of the various crises that we have to contend with in the world right now? Is there hope that technology can be part of a solution to any of it, do you think? 

I think yes, because technology is essentially an expression of human creativity and we're never going to stop being creative. It is what makes us human. When we think of solutions, oftentimes, it's possible that those solutions are going to include technology.

Engineers are not going to stop innovating, just as writers aren't going to stop writing and artists aren't going to stop painting and making songs. Innovation is going to continue.

The problem is when we present a particular technological situation as the solution, when we say that AI is going to be able to do X and then that's it. The real danger is to trust systems that turn people into data with the caretaking of people. People are not data. 

When we automate a lot of these systems, for example, education, and think that you can just have ChatGPT teach creative writing or English or history. It's possible that technology can help in those tasks. But I don't think that it can replace people in those tasks.

That's where the real danger is.

This interview had been edited for length and clarity. It was produced by Katy Swailes.