Sleep Is the New Status Symbol (nytimes.com)

The New York Times has a good story on how sleep is increasingly becoming a big business -- and the tech industry is rushing in to tweak our natural rhythms. From the article: At M.I.T.'s Media Lab, the digital futurist playground, David Rose is investigating swaddling, bedtime stories and hammocks, as well as lavender oil and cocoons. [...] Meanwhile, at the University of California, Berkeley, Matthew P. Walker, a professor of neuroscience and psychology and the director of the Sleep and Neuroimaging Laboratory there, is working on direct current stimulation as a cure for sleeplessness in the aging brain. [...] In Paris, Hugo Mercier, a computer science engineer, has invested in sound waves. He has raised over $10 million to create a headband that uses them to induce sleep. [...] Ben Olsen, an Australian entrepreneur, hopes to introduce Thim, a gadget you wear on your finger that uses sound to startle you awake every three minutes for an hour, just before you go to sleep. [...] Sleep entrepreneurs from Silicon Valley and beyond have poured into the sleep space, as branders like to say -- a $32 billion market in 2012 -- formerly inhabited by old-style mattress and pharmaceutical companies.

Comments

High-status kids

[GlobalEcho]

Sleep is the new status symbol

My teenagers have unbelievably high status, then.

Re:High-status kids

[alvinrod]

This apparently also explains why my cat thinks he's some kind of damned royalty.

Re:It's hyped and will shift to something else soo

[TWX]

Granted, I'm a morning person,

Oh, go take a long walk on a short pier!

*grumbles and goes for more coffee*

I hope people are taking sleep more seriously

[Riddler Sensei]

Being proud of your lack of sleep is like being proud of the monthly balance that you've been carrying on your high interest credit card for the past decade. You're not more successful due to your lack of sleep - you're successful despite it.

Sleep more and see how the speed and quality of your work improves, thus making more time for the very sleep that enabled such work (not to mention the overall quality of life improvements).

Re: Sleep transferrence

[narcc]

poor people (no money, lots of time) [...] rich people (no time, lots of money)

That's delusional. No one has less time than the working poor, who are often forced to work more than one job. Toss a family in the mix and you'll often see one parent working two jobs, a full and a part-time, with the other just working full time. Why not a fourth job? They don't have the time as they need to handle the kid's schedule, from school activities to doctors appointments. For them, time is at a premium, and sleep is a luxury.

In contrast, wealthy people have nothing but free time. There are exceptions, of course, but those are more often by choice, rather than necessity.

Don't delude yourself in to thinking the poor are poor because they don't work hard. They certainly work a lot harder, for a lot longer, than I do. I'll bet the same is true for you.

Re:It's hyped and will shift to something else soo

[TuringTest]

The human body is just an awful thing to have to maintain.

Given that you're going to stay with it for the rest of your life, you might want to learn to enjoy it, like the rest of us. Cooking and eating is a ceremony here in Europe, akin to a ritual.

Experimenting with flavours and cooking techniques may be a wonderful hobby, whether you cook yourself or pay someone to do it, although I recognize that it may be quite expensive in that dysfunctional food culture you have over there in the States, where poision is subsidized and quality raw ingredients are more expensive than processed food.