Slashdot Mirror
Matsushita Designed Sleep Room
wersh writes "Matsushita Electric Works has developed a room that helps people sleep. They've been letting their employees take 30-minute sessions in the room and so far, not one has failed to fall asleep, they claim. They plan to open the sleep room to the public next week and intend to start selling it in June 2005 for 30,000 USD."
And what they don't tell you is that they make those employees work for 72 hours straight before they head into the sleep room. Hehehe...
And they come with the house or apartment. Its called the bedroom.
In college, we called a room that would put you to sleep in 30 minutes or less a "lecture hall"
Matusushita is a huge company who are probably Sony's main rival, they are of course the parent company of Panasonic and numerous other brands of electronics, they usually like to keep a low profile
Seriously, how many of you would end up increasing your productivity enormously if you were able to take a half hour nap at work every now and then? Sometimes you just need to quick-charge the batteries.
Pity our corporate overlords would rather have zombies at their desks for a full 8 hours than surrender a few minutes for a nap.
CommentBot 0.7a running with args "-module irritate,disagree -target random"
MSDN is enough for me tzzzZZZZzzzzZZZZzzzz
i can't remember getting sleep like i could when i was a child, sometimes it takes me time to fall asleep, when i was kid, it was so easy and so restful.
this device just speeds up the process to make you fall asleep, doesn't improve the sleeping too, which i think is what a lot of people need.
Marge, get me your address book, 4 beers, and my conversation hat.
My University has one of those. They use it as a classroom for quantum physics.
DO NOT WRITE IN THIS SPACE
okMatsushita Patents the Bedroom!
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
A quart of whiskey and a bag of weed has proven effective in my experience and costs significantly less.
Doesn't this sleep room remind you of the suicide room from Soylent Green? Japan is about to corner the market on high-protien food.
The 30-minute session in the sleep room -- about the size of a small hotel room and programmed with a control panel in the wall -- starts with the bed upright like a recliner. A huge TV screen is positioned high above the dresser to meet perfectly with your line of vision, showing verdant scenes of a river ambling through a forest.
Gentle guitar and piano music plays against a backdrop of trickling water and birdsong.
So is it a sleep chamber, or New Age Music Torture Chamber?
(for those of you who have a excellent memory for the Far Side cartoons - the link is to Charlie Parker's private hell)
"What do you think?" "I think 'What, do you think?!'"
Recently, I've been looking into hypnotism, subliminal pursuation, inducing alpha state conciously and lucid dreams.
Although this does seem pretty cool, I have a breif idea of how it works, and just like most things, once you know how it works, it doesn't impress you as much (well, if it's not that hard in the first place).
To me, it looks like it's using hypnotism techniques to make you fall asleep (dimming the lights, making you relax, playing music (if you time the beats right you can change the brain waves into an alpha state)). Anyway, as we know, hypnotists can make people fall asleep in seconds, so making a computer which makes people fall asleep in 30 minutes, I have to admit, doesn't impress me that much. Considering the techniques are very similar
The sleeping gadget which impress me is the NovaDreamer - a device which, when you train yourself, can induce lucid dreams - It detects when your eyes are in REM sleep, and then uses flashes and sounds at the right level to wake you into a lucid state.
For those who don't know what lucid dreams are; they are dreams in which you know you are dreaming, and can therefore control your dream in any way you want - fly, breathe underwater, whatever. There are reports people can predict the future in lucid dreams too, which I really don't know if thats BS or not, we've all had deja vu's, and apparently they are previous dreams we've had. Lucid dreaming deviced would be more impressive to me, but hey.
Anyway, there's my opinion.
This is a v. .. very.... Zzzzzzz
So can anyone else who has three kids. It's magical. 2-5 minutes in a recliner is all you need.
... what I really need is a 'wake up' room:
In bright, pulsating light, the loud scream of a heavy metal guitar solo electrifies your lazy nerves. Your back is pounded with electric shocks, zapping muscles atrophied from the long lazy slumber, as an IV of raw Mountain Dew syrup is injected straight into your veins. Before you know it, you're at work, and actually on time for once...
Dream inducers? Great. Like I don't already have enough pairs of Lightspeed Briefs.
"Dump him, Marge. He's a loser. I travelled the world / and the seven seas. / I am watching / you through a camera."
It's very nice that efforts are being made to improve the environment to get people to fall asleep...but it seems that this may be the wrong approach to the real issue. A growing amount of sleep disorders suggests problems with higher stress levels, diet, or having a routine sleep pattern. These issues seem to be all common in the U.S. as well as other industrialized nations. In my own humble opinion, I think it's because as a collective group, we put too much time and focus on things that aren't important and in turn have forgotten what's really important, substituting friends, family, and improving oneself mentally/spiritually for material things or work. It would stand to reason that if this substitution leads to these types of problems, it is a poor substitute indeed. I know I sound like a hippy or self help moron, but I have to say, ever since I read this quote somewhere: "One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important." ...and thought on it, and took it to heart, I have just seen/approached things a lot differently. Haven't been fired yet, and hell even if I do, is it the end of the world?
I forgot where I was going with this, oh well. The next stage I would love to approach would be this qoute:
"I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours."
Oh well, enough posting, I should go take a nap.
it's Matsushita, not Matusushita.
(as a side note, Dick Van Patten played the attendant, I always knew there was something creapy about him...)
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
They're calling it "the cubicle".
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
"Matsushita Electric Works has developed a room that helps people sleep...."
That's been done already. It was at my insurance company's place in the salesman's office when I asked him the difference between term and whole life....
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
Matsushita needs a machine. We have Dennis Miller.
A huge TV screen is positioned high above the dresser to meet perfectly with your line of vision, showing verdant scenes of a river ambling through a forest.
Won't that make people feel the urge to pee?
I have sleep apnea, and I wonder if they have accomodated for anyone with this disorder? I think a pressurized room might do the trick, but I'm not sure.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Churchill, JFK, Napoleon, Thatcher, Leonardo, Brahms, Edison all (have) partaken in the power nap.
Hmmm so a sleeping invention from Japan... I'm thinkin' robotic arms holding rags covered in chloroform.
Yes but will it create background noise as well so I can't hear my tinnitus (note i'm only 20).
"You win again Gravity!" -Futurama (Zapp)
From a company who figured out how to eliminate toilet paper
I have seen some of these in Japan, but was always too afraid to use them. However, a lot of people seemed to judging by the sounds coming from the toilet.
Actually, if you take enough 30 minute naps during a day (usually 30 minutes every 4 hours) you can get away with as little as 3 hours of sleep PER DAY. It's known as polyphasic sleeping, and it tricks the mind into falling into REM sleep very quickly rather than waiting several hours (as when you only sleep in one 8-hour chunk). You even end up getting MORE REM sleep this way.
;)
0
Lots of mammals do it naturally, including us as babies, but we are raised by our parents to stay awake all day and sleep at night.
I tried this a few semesters ago to get through a rough finals week. Works great, you even feel more awake than usual. But you have to have a lot of stuff to do, otherwise you bore yourself to sleep
Anyways, I wish Universities and workplaces would have sleep-rooms and schedules separated in 3.5 hour chunks!!
Link: http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2002/4/15/103358/72
Have a fan going in your room or outside/in a closet. I have known many people that use this technique and everyone agrees this helps them fall asleep quickly. This will cost you about $20.00. Calm, white noise is the key to good rest.
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
Have you heard of light and sound machines? They use flashing LEDs and pulsing sounds or binaural beats to induce certain brainwave frequencies through something called the frequency following effect. I can even recall seeing one of these machines on the net that actually used a mild electrical charge pulsing at these frequencies as well.
Another thing you ought to know about lucid dreaming is that text in dreams does not stay constant. While you're dreaming, if you read anything then read it again a second time, it will change. The sleeping mind doesn't have the external stimuli to keep the dream imagery constant.
Psychologists didn't believe that it was possible that people could be conscious while dreaming. However some sleep researchers found out that wherever your eyes are looking at in a dream is where your eyes are facing in REM. They found one subject with a constant pattern in his REM activity- his eyes kept moving from side to side- while he dreamt of watching a Ping-Pong game. Sleep researchers used this to prove lucid dreaming exists. They got subjects to perform a pattern of eye movements when they achieved lucidity while dreaming, which they recorded with polygraphs so they had actual evidence.
I'm curious to know if anyone out there has any experience with enhancing the ability to have lucid dreams. I actually have a NovaDreamer, but the thing just wakes me up. And I'd like to know what these "computerized dream-inducers" mentioned in the article are. Could it be this? I heard that taking the nutritional supplement 5HTP enhances dreaming, but I've never tried it. I've tried Melatonin, but that doesn't seem to affect me.
What they should design is not a room, but a self-contained machine "bed" that helps people sleep. The "bed" would have a sound-proof, single-body glass dome cover with electronic blinds--a coating on the glass that dims when an electric charge is applied. The bed would be equipped with filtered air-conditioner, and it automatically adjusts to the right humidity level. Then they may have a widescreen TV, stereo speakers, and massage machine inside the bed for whatever reason.
It's much easier to buy a "package" that has everything you need, rather than having to buy a "room." At least, this this kind of sleeping machine "bed" would find a very good application on airline flights. If you ever had a 18 hour flight, then I'm sure you'll appreciate this very much.
I once had a signature.
A new kitchen can easily cost as much and you spend maybe a couple hours a day in there. You spend 4-9 hours a day in the bedroom. I personally think the money would be better spent on a good nights sleep then a pretty kitchen.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
As a life-long insomiac, I can tell you that I'd pay about whatever I'd have to. That's if it actually worked. Alex.
http://politiken.dk/VisArtikel.sasp?PageID=323076& Nr=3
From a danish newspaper
They called it a "lecture theatre".
"'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
- JRR Tolkien.
in a cinema near you.