💾 Archived View for jsreed5.org › log › 2023 › 202305 › 20230530-technology-in-my-dreams.gmi captured on 2023-06-14 at 13:58:27. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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Axxuy commented recently^ that computers appear quite infrequently in their dreams, despite the fact that they use computers all the time in waking life. Upon reading Axxuy's observation, I was suddenly made aware that computers are rare in my dreams as well. In particular, desktop and laptop computers seemingly don't exist in my dreamscapes.
Technology in general is quite prevalent, from cars to planes to modern buildings, but I find that in my dreams, these items are not digitized. Automobiles have big old-fashioned steering wheels and analog speedometers. The interiors of aircraft have cable-driven flight controls and mechanical dials for indicators. In the rare instances when smartphones and video game consoles appear, they primarily manifest for purposes of aesthetic, or in the case of phones, only to allow me to place a call.
One interesting phenomenon I've noticed is that I am almost never in control of the technology that does appear in my dreams. Nine times out of ten, if I am behind the wheel of a vehicle, I can't get it to stop or slow down. Every now and then a train might derail (but continue to run), or a plane might land in the middle of the ground without damage. My cell phone won't behave properly, a game console won't power on; the list goes on and on.
This seems to be related to my inability to read things in dreams: blocks of text will have some kind of intrinsic meaning, but if I try to read them as plain English, they become garbled messes of random letters. Both of these phenomena--that of reading and that of operating technology--often involve little physical interaction and require rigorous application of thought to understand.
The deductive part of my brain seems to shut off when I sleep. I can no longer simply accept the abstract logic of something without some sort of physical experience to accompany it. All my dreams involve tangible events happening to me, and in turn I dream about my tangible reactions to those events.
^ Do Humans Dream of Electric Sheep?
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[Last updated: 2023-05-30]