When my iPhone appears in a dream it *never* works properly. It often goes haywire in very visual ways - sometimes this alerts me that I am dreaming and allows me to become lucid, and “wake up” during the dream.
It’s the same for me. I am usually trying to phone someone to tell them I’ll be late but the phone doesn’t work and that’s when I think “ah, no need to panic, it’s a dream”. Glad it’s not just me.
I usually lump them in with my usual anxiety dreams, like not being able to find my car in a car park. But, yes, it could well be about not communicating IRL x
I have those dreams about trying to find my car, or trying to go back to someplace or something, over and over and over again I have those dreams… Is my psyche trying to tell me "you can't go back"? So far that's all I can deduce...
I don’t know. One of my recurring dreams is that I am trying to get home from somewhere but can’t find what I need to pack, or how I am going to travel. I think the “going home” thing is about getting to somewhere safe, because I don’t feel safe in real life.
I graduated high school in 2002, the nostalgia here hits home for me. Thank you.
Phenomenal point about the way that nostalgia is shaped by collective experiences, and it makes me wonder if the eras/decades of the late 20th century were the peak of nostalgia. You're right that there's too much going on in culture and media between the mid-2000's and today to really demarcate any "eras"; the most memorable memes seem to be the markers, now, and they transcend particular events. COVID is the standout: Apple Music told me that Inside by Bo Burnham was one of my top listens this year, and it hits me hard in the nostalgia. A collective event that, like 9/11, can't be avoided in any depiction of the era. But 2023 and 2018 feel about the same, on either side of it.
But I wonder about what people in 1925 were nostalgic about. Did they reminisce about the days of Queen Victoria? What about 1825? What was collective experience like before mass media, and how did it impact people's perceptions of society and who they are as individuals in relation to it? It seems to me that the late 20th and very early 21st century occupied a sweet spot for collective experience, where media was so ubiquitous as to be unavoidable but the pool was still narrow enough that we all experienced it similarly, at least in North America (and maybe Europe; I don't remember ever hearing news or culture from Asia or Africa back then).
So is this it? Will we continue to have 80's nostalgia until the Millennials die off, and 90's and early 2000s nostalgia until GenZ dies off, and then...less nostalgia? None? Or just less specific and universal and accessible?
In 1925, nostalgia was for the late 19th century before automobiles and urbanization took off. That's when you got those historical recreations of old fashioned towns and farms with lots of horses. Henry Ford built one in Michigan, for example. They remembered celebrities like Diamond Jim Brady and Lilian Russell. She was great with her jeweled bicycle and turning down Brady saying "I never marry out of spite." There was a big shadow of The Great War. The even more deadly influenza epidemic was more quickly forgotten. The nation was 50% urban, alcohol illegal and let's not get over uppity women.
Screens appear in my dreams - sometimes I find myself trying to make a phone call and the screen isn’t working and the numbers keep coming up incorrectly.
The screen life is sometimes endless In literal Dreams (not "life-goal dreams"). I have often long Dreams of working on my computer after working on it all day 😭 The worst has been the one where I just chatted on Microsoft Teams all night. These are probably more on the nightmare side of Dreams tho 😄
reading the section where you mention that "screens never appear in our dreams" i was reminded that a couple of nights ago i dreamt i was in a building full of corridors where i had been given a slip of paper with a combination of letters and digits on it that would allow me to enter a painting on one of the walls - i have absolutely no recollection of how i input the combination that allowed me to pass through the painting—and this memory lapse may in itself be significant—but the world i entered was essentially the same as the one i had come from except that my experience of it was augmented by the knowledge that i had had to pass through a secret gateway to get there
I rarely comment on posts, but wanted to say thanks for a great article. It feels a real shame that the majority of the comments below have picked up (in what sadly appears to be a slightly critical way) on just one sentence, rather than the piece as a whole.
Particularly since the pandemic I've become fascinated with how we record, and portray, the passing of time - how normal lives sit within the bigger picture of historical events.
9/11 and COVID are obvious markers of that, but humanity's journey through the technological change of recent years is an equally huge event. You ask some though-providing questions about our navigation of that, and about the nuances of how, or even if, we reflect that in either real history or fictional representation.
Thanks again - I know a lot of folk who will love this post, so I'll be sure to share!
While I can’t remember if I saw actual numbers on the screen of my phone in my dreams, I'm looking down at the cell phone screen in the dream and recognizing that, as hard as I’m trying to enter 911 into my phone, I'm messing up, and I have to keep trying to punch in the numbers again and again. So either I’m seeing that I’ve entered the wrong number or I guess it’s possible that I have some sense that it’s wrong or even that I as the dreamer was watching myself look down at my phone! I will have to take notice of this in my dreams from now on!
Another thing you just mentioned in your reply—"I thought it was generally understood that one can’t put words into order to form actual words in dreams as this uses a part of your brain that is not active during sleep.” I definitely put words in order to form actual sentences in my dream! I can often remember word-for-word what I say in my dreams. Not always, sometimes I can only remember the gist of what I’ve said, but sometimes I wake up shocked by the things I’ve said, or the names, and I write them down to consider them in the morning because the wording of them is so bizarre and yet seemingly meaningful, not nonsense. It’s true that other people speak more often in my dreams than I do, but I can also clearly remember the things they say in my dreams.
So interesting how many of us have dreams where we're trying to make a call, and for some reason, can’t seem to get the number entered correctly, no matter how hard we try over and over. Thought I was the only one …
Hey I got this on Substack Post. I was more an early 2010s teen but we really felt the 00s. It was right in the rearview mirror. It also had some of the best times of when I was still a little kid. For some reason I miss the mid-late 00s because by about 2012/13 I remember that second gen of social media like Facebook dominating life. Thanks for remembering the time before that owned our lives.
Drew, Your piece on era-driven memory unearthed “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” by Philip K Dick in my nostalgia trunk. Of course, being a baby boomer, I’ve lived thru the ‘60s Sexual Revolution, The Cold War, Vietnam, Rock, Disco, Punk, Rap, AIDS, iMac, the Internet, iPhone, IT social media, 9/11, Covid, High Tech. But the Age of AI will transform Reality.
Thanks for this peek into the relevant transitional past, Drew, well done. For those of us old enough to vividly remember life before internet, relating to those who aren't becomes more challenging by the day and essays like this help keep it in perspective ... rock on ...
"People like to point out that screens never appear in our dreams." ??? Screens DO appear in my dreams. Over the past 20 years, I've had many dreams involving my cell phone (either talking on it or try to dial 911 or text something on it) or my laptop, or I'll see that people are watching TV. Other than looking at my cell phone screen while frantically try to type something in, t's true that the content of the dream isn't usually something I'm viewing on a screen itself, however. My laptop seems to represent my writing as career, or an important story I'm working on.
I dreamt at least twice with a functional Google Maps (in fact, with an extra feature) on a functional phone. Recent tech has started infiltrating my dreams.
Last night I had a dream that featured my phone screen, and it worked just fine, with smilies and everything. The conversation was nightmarishly upsetting, which was the point of the dream. I could read the words and type them as well, so I don’t what my brain was doing.
Thoroughly enjoying this atavistic turn. It's about the only thing out there that doesnt feel like an LLM wrote it; please keep it coming
Haha thank you
When my iPhone appears in a dream it *never* works properly. It often goes haywire in very visual ways - sometimes this alerts me that I am dreaming and allows me to become lucid, and “wake up” during the dream.
It’s the same for me. I am usually trying to phone someone to tell them I’ll be late but the phone doesn’t work and that’s when I think “ah, no need to panic, it’s a dream”. Glad it’s not just me.
I've noticed those dreams about my phone not working are usually about a failure in communication with someone recently.
I usually lump them in with my usual anxiety dreams, like not being able to find my car in a car park. But, yes, it could well be about not communicating IRL x
I have those dreams about trying to find my car, or trying to go back to someplace or something, over and over and over again I have those dreams… Is my psyche trying to tell me "you can't go back"? So far that's all I can deduce...
I don’t know. One of my recurring dreams is that I am trying to get home from somewhere but can’t find what I need to pack, or how I am going to travel. I think the “going home” thing is about getting to somewhere safe, because I don’t feel safe in real life.
And sometimes my dreams are just weird 🤣
That sounds about right…
I graduated high school in 2002, the nostalgia here hits home for me. Thank you.
Phenomenal point about the way that nostalgia is shaped by collective experiences, and it makes me wonder if the eras/decades of the late 20th century were the peak of nostalgia. You're right that there's too much going on in culture and media between the mid-2000's and today to really demarcate any "eras"; the most memorable memes seem to be the markers, now, and they transcend particular events. COVID is the standout: Apple Music told me that Inside by Bo Burnham was one of my top listens this year, and it hits me hard in the nostalgia. A collective event that, like 9/11, can't be avoided in any depiction of the era. But 2023 and 2018 feel about the same, on either side of it.
But I wonder about what people in 1925 were nostalgic about. Did they reminisce about the days of Queen Victoria? What about 1825? What was collective experience like before mass media, and how did it impact people's perceptions of society and who they are as individuals in relation to it? It seems to me that the late 20th and very early 21st century occupied a sweet spot for collective experience, where media was so ubiquitous as to be unavoidable but the pool was still narrow enough that we all experienced it similarly, at least in North America (and maybe Europe; I don't remember ever hearing news or culture from Asia or Africa back then).
So is this it? Will we continue to have 80's nostalgia until the Millennials die off, and 90's and early 2000s nostalgia until GenZ dies off, and then...less nostalgia? None? Or just less specific and universal and accessible?
In 1925, nostalgia was for the late 19th century before automobiles and urbanization took off. That's when you got those historical recreations of old fashioned towns and farms with lots of horses. Henry Ford built one in Michigan, for example. They remembered celebrities like Diamond Jim Brady and Lilian Russell. She was great with her jeweled bicycle and turning down Brady saying "I never marry out of spite." There was a big shadow of The Great War. The even more deadly influenza epidemic was more quickly forgotten. The nation was 50% urban, alcohol illegal and let's not get over uppity women.
Screens appear in my dreams - sometimes I find myself trying to make a phone call and the screen isn’t working and the numbers keep coming up incorrectly.
The screen life is sometimes endless In literal Dreams (not "life-goal dreams"). I have often long Dreams of working on my computer after working on it all day 😭 The worst has been the one where I just chatted on Microsoft Teams all night. These are probably more on the nightmare side of Dreams tho 😄
reading the section where you mention that "screens never appear in our dreams" i was reminded that a couple of nights ago i dreamt i was in a building full of corridors where i had been given a slip of paper with a combination of letters and digits on it that would allow me to enter a painting on one of the walls - i have absolutely no recollection of how i input the combination that allowed me to pass through the painting—and this memory lapse may in itself be significant—but the world i entered was essentially the same as the one i had come from except that my experience of it was augmented by the knowledge that i had had to pass through a secret gateway to get there
Sounds like the tv show “Severance”
that hadn't occurred to me, and dreams themselves could be considered a kind of severance
I rarely comment on posts, but wanted to say thanks for a great article. It feels a real shame that the majority of the comments below have picked up (in what sadly appears to be a slightly critical way) on just one sentence, rather than the piece as a whole.
Particularly since the pandemic I've become fascinated with how we record, and portray, the passing of time - how normal lives sit within the bigger picture of historical events.
9/11 and COVID are obvious markers of that, but humanity's journey through the technological change of recent years is an equally huge event. You ask some though-providing questions about our navigation of that, and about the nuances of how, or even if, we reflect that in either real history or fictional representation.
Thanks again - I know a lot of folk who will love this post, so I'll be sure to share!
While I can’t remember if I saw actual numbers on the screen of my phone in my dreams, I'm looking down at the cell phone screen in the dream and recognizing that, as hard as I’m trying to enter 911 into my phone, I'm messing up, and I have to keep trying to punch in the numbers again and again. So either I’m seeing that I’ve entered the wrong number or I guess it’s possible that I have some sense that it’s wrong or even that I as the dreamer was watching myself look down at my phone! I will have to take notice of this in my dreams from now on!
Another thing you just mentioned in your reply—"I thought it was generally understood that one can’t put words into order to form actual words in dreams as this uses a part of your brain that is not active during sleep.” I definitely put words in order to form actual sentences in my dream! I can often remember word-for-word what I say in my dreams. Not always, sometimes I can only remember the gist of what I’ve said, but sometimes I wake up shocked by the things I’ve said, or the names, and I write them down to consider them in the morning because the wording of them is so bizarre and yet seemingly meaningful, not nonsense. It’s true that other people speak more often in my dreams than I do, but I can also clearly remember the things they say in my dreams.
So interesting how many of us have dreams where we're trying to make a call, and for some reason, can’t seem to get the number entered correctly, no matter how hard we try over and over. Thought I was the only one …
Hey I got this on Substack Post. I was more an early 2010s teen but we really felt the 00s. It was right in the rearview mirror. It also had some of the best times of when I was still a little kid. For some reason I miss the mid-late 00s because by about 2012/13 I remember that second gen of social media like Facebook dominating life. Thanks for remembering the time before that owned our lives.
Drew, Your piece on era-driven memory unearthed “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” by Philip K Dick in my nostalgia trunk. Of course, being a baby boomer, I’ve lived thru the ‘60s Sexual Revolution, The Cold War, Vietnam, Rock, Disco, Punk, Rap, AIDS, iMac, the Internet, iPhone, IT social media, 9/11, Covid, High Tech. But the Age of AI will transform Reality.
This was a great article. I graduated HS in 2002 and I feel all of this in my bones.
Thanks for this peek into the relevant transitional past, Drew, well done. For those of us old enough to vividly remember life before internet, relating to those who aren't becomes more challenging by the day and essays like this help keep it in perspective ... rock on ...
"People like to point out that screens never appear in our dreams." ??? Screens DO appear in my dreams. Over the past 20 years, I've had many dreams involving my cell phone (either talking on it or try to dial 911 or text something on it) or my laptop, or I'll see that people are watching TV. Other than looking at my cell phone screen while frantically try to type something in, t's true that the content of the dream isn't usually something I'm viewing on a screen itself, however. My laptop seems to represent my writing as career, or an important story I'm working on.
I dreamt at least twice with a functional Google Maps (in fact, with an extra feature) on a functional phone. Recent tech has started infiltrating my dreams.
If I had a dream like that, I believe it would be telling me that my life is functioning well, and even better than I thought it would!
I literally had a dream last night where I was scrolling through my iPhone contacts trying to find someone I couldn’t remember who their name was
Last night I had a dream that featured my phone screen, and it worked just fine, with smilies and everything. The conversation was nightmarishly upsetting, which was the point of the dream. I could read the words and type them as well, so I don’t what my brain was doing.