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The computer is a dream

axxuy asks, Do humans dream of electric sheep?:

I don't. I've noticed that I hardly ever dream about computers, either using them or simply as an object in the environment. That's interesting considering how much of my waking life revolves around them.

Do humans dream of electric sheep?

And Rob notes that computers and digital technology are rare in their dreams, though non-digital technology often shows up, frequently in uncontrollable ways, like not being able to read in a dream:

Technology in my dreams

I had to think about it for a bit. I certainly used to dream about computers. I used to dream in ASCII, the dream rolling down the insides of my closed eyelids like letters on a flickering CRT. And then I'd wake up, make coffee,and check Usenet on my 386, dialed into either the CS department Sun server, or a community UUCP provider, at 2400 baud. Probably even for a while after that, when I was setting up auto-dial and dynamic DNS on my 486 and 56k modem, and porting Unix software to OS/2 instead of working my dissertation proposal, completely unrelated to computers.

But I don't think I dream about computers anymore, just like the others. They're probably there in the background, but never prominent enough for me to remember. My dream journal is far from comprehensive, but I think it's probably representative, and my last dream specifically mentioning a computing device was from 2008.

I do have an idea of why, though.

The Computer Is A Feeling

Tim Hwang and Omar Rizwan write:

1 The computer is a feeling, not a device.

2 By this we mean that what makes a computer a computer has nothing to do with commands, compilers, or even machines. For us, computer is the specific feeling of artifacts that allow for intimate systems of personal meaning.

And much more that is insightful, go read it. In short, though, our lives today are filled with computing devices. Some of them even run computer operating systems, and some of them are programmable, but even they rarely if ever produce the computer feeling. To me, it's a sense of endless possibility, just out of reach, one neat hack away and ever receding. Like the Dreamlands. Like Lost Carcosa.

The modern Internet and the commodification of computing has taken from us our dreams, and left us in a desert where even the truly wondrous becomes instantly mundane. And so it's no wonder we don't dream of computers.