Dreams Ex Machina

The American Dream provides impetus to modernization and the implementation of technology. With our tools providing us with a soft lifestyle, we want everything else to conform to fit our microcosm. True reality is too irresponsive to our whims. We want a pacifier, a simulacrum of success, of our dreams, for we are too complacent to go out and try to achieve them. The imitation is instant, and with some carefully planted blindness to reality, we have an effortless success.

When I started research, I simply pulled up the Google search engine, after all the American Dream is such as central part of our history and culture how hard could it be to find? And what come up as the best matches? The American Dream Safari (a tour of the United States), The American Dream Cars (a resource for collector automobiles), American Dreams (a source of inspirational speakers). Of course, what could be more the American Dream than commercialization?

The ideal presented to us by the American Dream is the acquisition of wealth and power by anyone, a contrast to the rigid hierarchy of the European society of the 18th and 19th centuries. The feudal system had never existed in the New World, and thus a more equitable aristocracy formed. With the rich natural wealth available in the New World, especially when compared to its small population, anyone could rise in status. The southern states boasted fertile land, as did the west along with its unclaimed forests and animal life. The north developed a strong industry providing ample opportunity of work for the constant stream of immigrants. "Hope...was domiciled in America as the Pope is in Rome" writes Tuchman (105).

Personifying the ideal, several presidents rose from humble backgrounds, including Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln. With industrial technology came people like Andrew Carnegie, who worked their way up to positions of wealth and power. Horatio Alger and William Makepeace Thayer, authors of the time, encouraged the ideal with their stories and biographies of success respectively.

Even more prevalent, however, is the desire to gain wealth effortlessly, as demonstrated by the mass of people involved in the Californian and Alaskan Gold Rushes. Technology has furthered this idea by taking on much of our labor. With domestic applications of technology we are free, free to work more so as to buy more tools.

Then came speed; we became impatient. The microwave becomes a common appliance, no longer do we bother to heat the broiler or stove, the microwave satisfies us in seconds. With power so easily in our grasp, with our commands so readily obeyed, it was easy to jump to the idea that success was not to earned, but our right.

What good is wealth alone? Money, a concept generated by society, is useless without someone else to lord your wealth over, after all what can money buy if no one else wants it? And what better way to flaunt wealth than with the newest and shiniest trinkets? We're interested in "what we will drive and how we will kill one another" as James Poniewozik writes, we want something tangible ("Why we're so Obsessed with 'Next'"). Money can't buy happiness, but maybe a newer gadget will bring us a little closer; it cycles endlessly, new replaces the old, on the off chance that one will satisfy us.

Technology provides tangible evidence of progress; a factory shows our progress, a forest filled with hidden wonders does not. "The guys with the slides rules have sold the world their vision of things," writes Melnyczuk, because their vision gives us new toys, we get something to hold up to the world (217). We look for the one day where we can shout, "Look on my works ye Mighty, and despair!" without the accompanying lines of Shelley's poem ("Ozymandias").

The machines follow us everywhere, the cell phone and pager prevent us from ever getting away from the world, the laptop makes sure that a computer is always within reach. And the car, it sadistically places the world at our fingertips while shackling us with another piece of technology. Even the hikers and campers drag radios and other products of technology. We want to show off our success, and our machines make sure they are always nearby to do so.

Being too complacent in our own comfort, we're willing to give control over to the machines, as long as they deliver. As Brent Taylor writes in his tongue-in-cheek column "The Sandbox Manifesto," "Indeed, it [telephone] seems innocent, until the darned thing starts ringing! As soon as it sees fit, that shrill bell tone you’re so conditioned to answer it takes control of you" (2). We find it a small price to pay for a soft life of atrophication.

Most will support the opinion that the innovations of technology are a necessary part of our lives. And, of course, where would the businessman be without access to his company? or the scientist without the works of his colleagues available to him? But is it really worth the price? Business functioned fine with their abroad employees using public telephones, and before that, they made do using the telegraph and couriers. The researcher made do with periodicals and journals. Why do we want the newest tools to keep around? because they're faster.

But is speed what we require? As Slouka states, "the terrain of the spirit--by which I mean the domain of silence, of solitude, of unmediated contemplation--is everywhere under siege" (148). We desire speed and efficiency, the very thing which damages 'the terrain of the spirit.' The telephone is allowed to interrupt our silence and solitude at any time. The technology meant to provide a little assistance ends up commanding us.

Impatience has control over us; we no longer have the philosophers sitting around idly and thinking, nor the 17th century scientist experimenting and theorizing on a whim. If technology can solve the problem, we'll file the answer away; otherwise, it is not worth the time to ponder.

The problems of using technology are evident, but where can the line be drawn? The same technology that allows researchers to transmit their findings across the world gives us the invasion of e-mail. (Written by Joseph Strom) The telescope which lets us pick out details in distance objects also lets us frame reality in a lifeless photograph. It's left to the individual to decide which technology he wants, and nearly unanimously he chooses it all.

So what is important? Obviously not the book, the text just sits there; as Frick states, "The seductive entwining of power and passivity is undoubtedly the reason why a younger generation has less and less patience with bare text that's 'just black and white and doesn't move,'" (207). Nor is the leisurely pace of nature which we discard for the hum of a computer. And the computer itself is unimportant; how many of us truly utilize its potential as a simulator? After all, the only thing a computer can truly do well.

Once, while hiking, I was slightly ahead of the group, and caught sight of a dark shape off the trail. I was frozen in place as I realized that I was looking at a bear from not 50 feet away. A bear that appeared only as a dark haze against the dim forest undergrowth was more a bear than the most perfect photographer's image, or zoo's habitat.

Reality is still there; still real.

The American Dream, fueled by the hungers of the individual, finds itself up against a technologically fueled complacency. Together, we have a compromise--our dream, as mimicked by a machine. The entire world is waiting out there, though only a virtual one. The shields need to be set aside for a moment; the world needs to be let back in.

Frick, Thomas. "Either / Or." Tolstoy's Dictaphone Ed. Sven Birkerts. St. Paul, Minnesota: Grey Wolf Press, 1996. 209-215.

Melnyczuk, Askold. "Dreadful Excitements." Tolstoy's Dictaphone Ed. Sven Birkerts. St. Paul, Minnesota: Grey Wolf Press, 1996. 216-230.

Poniewozik, James. "Why We're So Obsessed With 'Next.'" Time 8 September 2003.

Slouka, Mark. "In Praise of Silence and Slow Time." Tolstoy’s Dictaphone Ed. Sven Birkerts. St. Paul, Minnesota: Grey Wolf Press, 1996. 147-156.

Taylor, Brent. "The Sandbox Manifesto." 2003. 4 November 2003 http://www.mattandmichael.com/sandboxmanifesto/.