Why doesn't technology work properly in dreams?

I tend to think that it’s our brain preparing us for the possibility that these things won’t work in real life. A way to file out all the possibilities.

It’s easier to notice when things go wrong than go right. How many light switches did you use today?

I think that’s the fun part of lucid dreaming. Sometimes when I “turn on” light switches balloons come out instead of light.

Hmm I don’t know I have had some pretty awesome chase scenes in my dreams involving my car running from the cops, I was accompanied by Toad from Mario Brothers.
I guess I have had dreams where technology doesn’t work but then I have had dreams where I know im talking on my cell phone or checking it for the time or on my computer or something. I don’t know about lucid dreaming exactly though

When I have dreams like that, I assume it is my power of dealing with frustration that is getting exercised.

GQ. I don’t have a clue but I’ll be following the discussion.

I always just figured such failures were intrinsic to the plot.

Mainly because the failure of things to work “right” in dreams is, for me, not limited just to technological items, but to just about anything.

Flying dream ==> gravity is broke.

Can’t run away dream ==> muscles don’t work

Silent scream dream ==> voice is kaput

Hot 3-on-1 action dream ==> social order has collapsed

Y’dig?

note: I don’t deal with technology much in my dreams
What would be fun about dreaming if everything worked like it was supposed to?

You may find this of interest.

”In dreams, inanimate objects can easily take on personalities and other forms of animation. Technology is stupid in the sense that it is an extension of our will and does what we want it to, or ends up in a junk yard. As the direct result of humankind’s poor planning, some cities are drowning in their own waste.

In dreamland, the pushy use of will and domination is less likely to work the same way as in the material world. Thus inventions and technologies like our toaster, our cars and our phones are less likely to be extensions of our will and more likely to be representations of our relationship to will and willpower.

If I had a dream where mechanical things weren’t working, I would see this as an opportunity to come into relationship with my own will (and by extension, technologies) in a different way.

For example, I might consider the possibility that I am pushing way too hard and using technology to extend my brute will. I might look for other alternatives for dealing with my world, shifting my focus to cooperation and away from domination.”

The author is basically taking your point about how recent technology is to our culture and expanding on it.

GQ This happens to me all the time. I cannot drive cars or dial phones.

I’m sure once we uncover why we dream in the first place everything else will fall into place.

or lightly onto the flying purple unicorn that is driving the cab i’m in.

Why should it?
Boundaries are caused when matter collides. In a dream, when there is a collision and it does not occur it progresses forward without consequence.

No consequence, now you can fly.

If you haven’t seen it already, you should watch Waking Life.

Hi, I found this when googling the same question. In my dreams phones never work and I get very frustrated at this. I also have the same dream over and over of being in a airplane and it crashing. I always survive but each time it has been power failure. Sometime I wake up and am so worked up from being frustrated with my dreams. The cell phone issues is almost nightly. I joined here just to post this and to follow. Thanks for bringing this up!

I think of it this way, if you flick a light switch in a dream at say… anywhere, you are not actually at a light switch, you are still in you bed, sleeping. Same thing with phones. You imagine that you are holding the phone, but it is actually on the charger, so it does not work due to the brain does not remember in dreams what we take for granite in our normal lives in the material world.

I think dreams are just another reality but it doesnt make them less real than this one where im typing this message. Everything is real cause it exists somewhere. I think some things dont work on dreams cause we (our consiousness, spirit, essence) is a place where there are not rules established.

Its as if youre creating that place therefore there are a lot of missing rules. Very few people know actually how a phone works for example. All the complex operations it has to do in order to work. If we created this realm we dont know this thus thenphone wont work.

Although, phones work here because there are people in the same reality who knows how they work, people who set the rules for it already. We dont need to know how or why it works if some one else did it already for us.

I think we need to ask the dream gods why technology doesn’t work or a really good scientist.
As for cars, I don’t really see anything technical about it so why don’t they drive properly….gas, brake! not only do i disbelieve that technology has anything to do with things working improperly but what about currant and frequency which our body also provides? maybe i’m just blabbing my trap but why not mention these two possibilities? Imagine if the phones did work, who would you call? Remember we invented phones but signals and frequency I believe are not man made!

Can’t remember ever trying to flip switches or search contacts in the dream but just last night in the dream, I dialled my dad twice and when he wasn’t picking up, I used some gadget to trace his lockation to some island and that’s were it all ended just like that

I came to the discussion because my cellphone never ever works in my dreams. It’s the only pice of technology that never works properly. And of course I need it only in dire situations. I’m a lucid dreamer and it’s frustrating to say the least