A blogger who I admire Euan Semple just this week remarked that he sometimes has odd dreams about technology and it got me thinking.
In his dreams, the BBC-trained engineer sees rooms dark and grey that used to be filled with the excitement of TV productions.
I was a journalist for 12-years and sometimes I still have newspaper-related anxiety dreams.
In the dream, I can’t scribble the story fast enough in my notebook to ring the copytaker and phone through the story ahead of the panic of an upcoming deadline. I struggle with an intro and I can’t read my words back.
I don’t know how to interpret dreams, but I reckon this is because I spent years polishing and getting good at a particular craft I don’t use anymore. My puzzled sub-conscious is asking me why I’m not using it.
The roots our early rule learning put down with us are so deep that they’re still there decades after being last used. Technology has made them irrelevant.
As I write this, a Facebook group has posted a picture of fishwives on the streets of Liverpool in 1900.
Maybe those women in old age too would dream of selling fish years after their trade died out.
And in years to come, reader, maybe you’ll dream too of struggling to get a fax machine to work.