Building the Dream

Originally published in The Kappa Alpha Psi Journal, Fall 2025

A dream is the magic that emerges from a collection of thoughts, often occurring through unconsciousness, but can also be semiconscious through daydreaming. It can cover a broad spectrum of experiences, from exhilarating to frightening, and, in many ways, it’s about the complexity and creativity of our minds. Our dreams are sometimes about the unknown and the wishful known, stretching into the territories we admire, desire, or aspire to. No matter what shape these dreams take, they are powerful and can provide direction and insight into changing the course of history or our own personal destiny.

There is a strong connection between dreams and curiosity, as curiosity can be the fuel that brings dreams to reality. Dreams can stretch intellectual curiosity in ways by synthesizing memories, recent thoughts, and new ideas, producing creative insights and possibilities. Some of the most powerful possibilities became a reality as a result of someone dreaming big and asking questions like “Why?” or “How?” or, my favorite, “What if?” Just imagine the vastness of the dreams and the innovation process required for humankind to develop solutions to fundamental challenges, such as hunting, cooking, protection, gravity, distance, communication, time, and vision, to name a few. As we evolved, some of our most significant technological advancements resulted from dreaming big:

• Human Flight by the Wright Brothers, who dreamed in 1903, built and flew the first gasoline powered airplane.
• Mass-produced Automobile by Henry Ford, who dreamed in 1908 of making affordable and accessible automobiles, not for the wealthy but for ordinary people.
• Space Exploration by President John F. Kennedy, who dreamed in 1969 of putting a person on the moon with the Apollo 11 mission.
• The Modern-day Computer, developed by IBM and Thomas Watson, Jr., was envisioned in 1952 as the first general-purpose computer designed for mass production and architectural standardization for use in business and government worldwide.
• Google Search, a project by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, was conceived in 1998 as a search engine that would better organize and present the world’s information, thereby becoming the way for billions of people to discover, connect, and innovate.
• The iPhone, envisioned and developed by Apple and Steve Jobs, was unveiled in 2007, introducing a powerful, user-friendly wireless mobile platform to everyday people, enabling them to communicate and access information more easily.
• Watson AI, developed by IBM, was envisioned in 2011 as a machine capable of “thinking,” meaning learning, reasoning, and understanding in natural language, as demonstrated by its victory against the all-time winners on the popular TV game show Jeopardy.
• ChatGPT, developed in 2022 by OpenAI and a team of researchers who envisioned systems that could understand and generate human language naturally, is now widely used as a tool for answering questions, solving problems, and developing and editing content, among its many capabilities.
• Quantum AI, a dream of accelerating AI by orders of magnitude through quantum computing that performs high-volume calculations efficiently while leveraging AI’s learning and pattern recognition capabilities, is providing answers to complex problems beyond what today’s classical systems can do.

These are all exceptional outcomes from our past, for our present day, and inspirations for our future. On a more relatable note, dreams can be as simple as graduating from high school, attaining a college degree, getting a good job, buying a house, raising a family, or, more personally, writing a book. Although I have experienced my fair share of dreams, my propensity for daydreaming remains highly active, arguably more so than usual. I continue to envision myself in places and situations I want to be. My most vivid dream, at a very early age, was always seeing myself as a successful business leader. The positive images that resulted provided me with a roadmap of behavior and preparation that would guide me over the years.

Rodney C. Adkins (Rod)
Author
Curiosity Redefines the Limits