Have You Ever Had A Computer-Based Dream?

Have You Ever Had A Computer-Based Dream?

The other day I woke up convinced that Gawker Media management sent out an email that never actually existed. The dream was so real I had to search my inbox just to be sure. Has this ever happened to you?

For those of us who work at Gizmodo, the experience seems pretty common. It makes sense, if dreams can make sense: we spend so many of our waking hours thinking about Internet Stuff that of course it would bleed through into our REM states.

My colleagues all reported similar dreams: dreams about trying to write an article that can never be finished; sending nonsense emails to the wrong recipients; even posting to Twitter. Urbanism Editor Alissa Walker shared that she’s gotten excited by things she spotted on the internet — sights and sites that weren’t real at all. And computer dreams weren’t limited to social interaction: Design Editor Kelsey Campbell-Dollaghan has dreamed in AutoCAD, a 2D/3D drawing software, and EIC Annalee Newitz has been known to glimpse binary code.

I’ve imagined computer screens for a long time — years before it had anything to do with my job. As a teenager I spent countless hours playing MUSH (multi-user shared hallucination) text-based games, and I would dream in Telnet terminal screens and “poses,” the written actions that drove gameplay. In college, I would wake up convinced I’d started my essays early, because I saw them scrolling past in Microsoft Word. Later on, when I worked as a community manager, I used to see comments constantly in the still of the night.

I’m curious if you’ve had a computer-based dream, and how much it correlates to your waking life. If you work with tech or the internet, do you picture your job? Or are you seeing something more fun — a video game, a much-loved online video star? If your work doesn’t involve being online except for communication and distraction from work, do you ever dream in screens? What about nightmares? Tell us in the comments what you see when you close your eyes.

Image via Wikimedia Commons


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