Fletcher: did you know that dreams have changed considerably in the last couple decades?
Dan: No, mostly because you can't use "know" for falsehoods.
Fletcher: if you look at old studies of dreams, they all show that, apart from the occasional odd scene change, most people's dreams were fairly realistic, things that could almost plausibly be "real life" events
Fletcher: and that people rarely dreamed about work or using the computer
Fletcher: i can't even remember the last time i had a dream that didn't involve computers on some level
Fletcher: in fact, the computer aspects are practically the only realistic parts of them
Fletcher: my dreams can be about nonsense like removing bricks from a floating wall to stop ghosts who can only move through intact walls, but they'll start with me reading a news story about the approaching ghost menace and opening up extra browser tabs to see what wikipedia says about it
Autumn: Wikipedia says "Not notable! Only mentioned in one weird guy's dreams: DELETE"
Dan: I don't see what distinction you're trying to make. People dream about the stuff from their real lives, and your real life is entirely reading stuff online.
Fletcher: that's just it
Fletcher: my real life is much more than that
Fletcher: but that's the only "real" aspect that makes it into dreams
Fletcher: it wasn't always this way
Fletcher: all the records show that it used to be exactly the reverse
Autumn: People used to have dreams about meatspace and not cyberspace?
Fletcher: it's sad that those are the best words we have for the 'spaces
Fletcher: but yes
Fletcher: even when computer use started to be common, people kept dreaming about everything but computers
Fletcher: i don't know when that changed, but it was less than 14 years ago
Autumn: Does it count if you have a dream about someone else's computer?
Dan: I really get the sense that you're misinterpreting the studies, or cherrypicking some side description and turning it a wider claim than it was.
Fletcher: i can give you a list of the ones i've looked at if you want
Dan: No thanks.
Fletcher: i think what's going on is that there's a threshold you can cross
Fletcher: between these two incompatible modes of experience
Fletcher: once you're far enough into existing online, your dreams flip over
Fletcher: and they start pulling their material from a different bin
Fletcher: but i don't remember the transition happening
Fletcher: the case studies are pretty clear that it must happen, though
Dan: Well, I'm not on either side of that transition. I don't remember all my dreams, but the impression I get from the ones I do is that they involve computers in a reasonable proportion to how much my daily life involves computers. Maybe a bit less.
Hawaii: i had a dream last night about eating a computer!
Hawaii: it went whhhrrrrrrrrrrrrncrnch
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