Capitalizing on sleep deprivation … ?
“Throughout the 1970s theorists of the new right called for a radical restructuring of the US economy. In order to reassert its world dominance, it was claimed, the United States would need to move from heavy industry to an innovation-based economy, one in which the creativity of the human mind (a resource without limits) would replace the mass-production of tangible commodities” (Cooper 2008: 18). The second report of the Club of Rome argued that “limits to growth were time-like rather than space-like (p16).
Since the ’70s, it would seem, there has been an increasing acknowledgement that the human mind does indeed have limits, and they are indeed those of time. It seems that if we go too long without rest, we break down, as the incalculable number of articles that discuss the relationship between sleep deprivation and poor learning attests (see for example: http://www.torontosun.com/news/canada/2010/02/18/12934411.html and http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/7285527/AAAS-A-nap-after-lunch-boosts-the-brains-learning-capacity.html from the past couple weeks). Possibly more worrisome, at least to the media it seems, is that it may also make you (gasp) FAT! (http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/A-Sleep-Weight-Connection-shows-Sleep-is-essential-stay-thin-85817767.html)
That’s where this invention steps in to save our ailing minds and bodies:
That purports to allow you to achieve the equivalent of a full 8 hours of sleep in the time it takes to have a power nap through a cap that sends magnetic pulses to an area of the brain in order to produce slow wave sleep.
The full article can be read here: Sleep Machine
While this is still very much in the research phase (a number of papers have been published since this article assessing the impact of magnetic pulses to generate slow waves and its impact on later wakefulness) with no commercial applications yet, comments to this article such as this one: 
speak to the perceived intersections between sleep, labour and the economy, particularly since this is a UK publication, a part of the world where they demand (and receive) considerably more vacation time. Indeed this echoes Cooper’s paraphrasing of Marx that the “capitalist promise is counterbalanced by willful deprivation, its plenitude of possible futures counteractualized as an impoverished, devastated present, always poised on the verge of depletion” (p20). The increasing attention to sleep in the media, and the exhausted fear that this device will signal the 23 hour workday suggests that much of humanity (as resource) is indeed on the verge of depletion. The article frames the invention as a way to help insomniacs, yet it does point out the contradiction that the device doesn’t help people fall asleep, but instead changes their brain wave patterns once they are asleep to get rid of those pesky and inefficient other two NREM stages. While this device is hardly comparable to the amazing possibilities attributed to extremophiles, it does follow recent biology in its attention to “the limits and possible futures of life on earth” (p. 20), and as such, the promissory future hinted at that a power nap could soon “mimic the restorative benefits of 8 hours of rest” should be taken as seriously.
Through these assumptions about what stages matter for sleep’s rejuvenating powers, and the attempt to manipulate the brain into going into these stages instantly instead of cycling through the stages several times a night, these scientists are trying to crack the code to humanity’s daily limit to productivity. Indeed, this invention posits the brain as something that can be hacked into to receive greater gains from a smaller time period. This prompts me to ask the following questions: what would happen if we were able to make productive use of an extra 6 hours a day without suffering any decline in performance? Would our lives be enriched or would it raise the bar for what we are expected to accomplish in a day? Is this an example of commercial interests expanding into the sphere of ‘life itself’, as Cooper has argued? Would this promise of more life out of life be accompanied by a move to devalue life (as Cooper argues on page 49)? And if such a technology were indeed perfected, would it follow the same fate as ARVs in the third world, or would it follow the outsourcing of production, creating more violently exploitative factories?
March 4, 2010 at 3:29 am
As someone who suffers from a litany of sleep problems (intermittent insomnia, late sleep phase syndrome, night terrors, nightmares, sleep paralysis, sleep walking, you name it!) I’m quite taken with your post. And, I am acutely aware of sleep and it’s relation to productivity. The bulk of my anxiety about sleep (will I fall asleep? will I hear my alarm in the morning? will I sleep in and miss my appointment?) is generated by my inability to make my wily sleep patterns fit into the established normative sleep patterns of the capitalist 9am to 5pm cycle. It’s a constant struggle!
Personally I have doubts as to whether or not I would be able to make productive use of those extra 6 hours, assuming this sleep machine successfully enabled me to sleep less. Since so much emphasis is already put upon how much one can accomplish in the traditional workday, adding more hours to the workday would likely only steepen the expectations/stress/anxiety about what a person can get done in a day.
But generally speaking, none of us are nearly as productive as we’d like to be in the run of a day. Time is tricky, and our attempts to apprehend it, predict it and manage it are generally frustrating and futile. I’m not sure anything would really change with a longer work day, but I think what’s most important here is what we *hope* the sleep machine will do because its promise ultimately betrays how much we value quantity over quality.
March 4, 2010 at 10:48 am
Very interesting post. I think the point you made that this device doesn’t actually help you fall asleep but simply creates a more ‘efficient’ sleep is very important. The idea that this product is being sold (at least as the article puts it) as a solution to insomnia is telling. As many of us (all?) that have struggled with insomnia can attest (as Sara does above), it’s not about quality often but quantity. The conditions surrounding the onset of insomnia and its possible causes are, of course, not address. This highlights the kind of inner contradiction inherent in capitalism: the very idea of creation of value (better sleep) form life requires at the same time that a move be made to devalue and reimpose limits (i.e., the logic that if you’re awake more, you can work more) that you mention. Having said this, I would love to be more productive and the allure of this kind of technology is indeed quite tempting (perhaps why this capitalist devaluing is so successful?). I agree however with Sara that it’s likely that little would change, just a higher bar.
March 4, 2010 at 11:28 am
I love this post, takes me back to when I was 15 trying my darndest to maintain a polyphasic sleep pattern…albeit with the intention of more potential video game time, rather than labor time… In the end I just had more to do in the game I played at the time, more time simply meant more options, and paradoxically…less time…
I am inclined to agree with Sara regarding the question of increased productivity. Im not entirely sure that we would end up any “more productive” with this technology as our notion of productivity is relational. In particular, it shares an important relation with time, more time would just seem to mean more productivity is expected and the same proportion is not met.
Part of Cooper’s answer might be found at the end of chapter 1 where she states that it “becomes urgent to formulate a politics of ecological contestation that is neither survivalist nor techno-utopian” (50). I think the point she might make is that we cant consider this an easy “techno-utopian” solution to the “scarcity” of labor-time we have available any more than we can construct a politics of labor-time-scarcity to any productive end. In each case we run up against the same self limiting system; valorisation begets more valorisation, more time begets more time demanded, or in Sara’s words we merely up the “expectations/stress/anxiety about what a person can get done in a day”.
I’m not sure if I even know where to start articulating some middle ground between the techno-utopian and survivalist dialogs, but thats the catch with capitalist accumulation I think…we are already in that system.
March 4, 2010 at 12:42 pm
It is interesting to note, picking up on the last two points, that perhaps one could become “more productive” only in a very specific sense. One would, perhaps, be able to play video games a little longer, but they would hardly be able to keep up with the variety of tasks one is asked to accomplish during the day. Even if one is relieved of the need to sleep, in what way does the alertness made possible by this machine manifest itself? If, as is the case when I have consumed too much coffee at night, it simply works to keep me awake, then I would be capable of productivity only in the most limiting sense. Indeed, thinking about Cooper’s Foucauldian argument about the modern, neoliberal desire to avoid death, to avoid crisis, I am not sure I would be able to “innovate” with six extra hours of wakefulness. I would only be capable of accomplishing the most mechanic, industrial tasks. Actually, maybe that’s not a bad idea. Give me one of those damn machines and put me to work in a factory at night. Then I can pay for my tuition and, with the relief of stress, be a much more productive and innovative scholar!
Hell, yes!
March 4, 2010 at 1:01 pm
This. Is. Insane.
The comment that you reproduced in your post says it all – the researchers can go ahead and pitch it as a device to help insomniacs, but we all know what its real purpose would become. Certainly brings out how the obverse side of ‘extracting surplus’ in the economic sense is an intensive reduction in the ‘surplus’ (ie, leisure) time of the labourer… Really, I’m just reeling with the possibilities of a world in which we only physiologically need 1 hour of sleep for every 24. Would people uniformly take advantage of this? Would this technology be a ‘luxury item,’ or would it be an old-fashioned full night’s sleep that became the luxury?
March 4, 2010 at 1:25 pm
I’m with Ali (and the commenter) on this one. This device would either be implemented on unwilling subjects (think sweatshops), or I think more likely, adopted willingly by workaholics or people in perceived “high-stress” jobs (like stock traders, surgeons, talent agents, grad students, etc.). Just because the government is definitely interested in converting surplus sleep time into economic labour doesn’t imply that it will be forced on the population. I can just as easily see this distopian future of perpetual wakefulness arising by choice in many cases, and not by mandate or explicit requirement. In the corporate world enough implicit or unstated “rewards” exist for those who can beat the need to sleep.
March 4, 2010 at 2:17 pm
this post brought up a few things for me last night, but i always have trouble writing responses in the evening. after a certain point, my thoughts become jumbled and i know that i need to sleep and wake fresh before i can make any kind of sense. the problem is that i cant get to sleep. part of this may be inherent to my physiology, and part due to the work schedules i’ve had for the past couple of years. on a good night i get to sleep by 2 am, and drag myself out of bed by 10. but then there are the 4 and 5 am days (nights?). the problem is that even if i get up at 8, i cant get to sleep at 10 or midnight. and its not as if that time is productive. im too tired to work, and too awake to sleep. it seems that what my body really wants is 20 hours awake and 8-9 hours asleep.
in this sense, i have often fantasized about being able to get the same rest with less time spent asleep. i fantasize about having more time to do the myriad things i want to do in life: read, write, play, loaf, work, and sleep in when i feel like it. i imagine how much more ‘successful’ i could be, like those ‘workaholics’ and ‘high-stress’ people jordan mentioned. industrialization, automation, and robots already promised us this, yet failed to deliver, for the capitalist reasons others have already explored. indeed, the easier and faster it is to do things, from traveling in motorized vehicles to manufacturing them to cooking food, the less time we have for any of it. toffler’s future shock doesn’t even seem dated.
my other small comment was in relation to a point you also made: this device takes for granted that only one aspect of the sleep cycle if the important one, and all the rest is just foreplay. the analogy might be a vulgar one, but frankly i cant help thinking of those for whom the only important part of sex is heteronormative genital intercourse. what a shame to dismiss the rest…
March 7, 2010 at 8:18 pm
Interesting conversation I am joining it a little late, my apologies.
Just to add to the list of; sleeping pills, weird head devices, and the numerous books on self relaxation techniques that line bookstore shelves, that populate the wonderfully odd ways sleep or sleeplessness is commoditized, I like to add films. Both sleeplessness and sleep are central topics in many films, namely horror films. In a popular cultural imaginary it seems representations of sleep are most often used to work a series of anxieties ranging from sexuality and morality, to as Sara I think you mentioned, productivity and morality. From Freddie coming to get you in your sleep during your teenage years to the most recent cinematic representation Ink, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBGeErufQdY, (which Karen I think may appeal to you) that depicts a battle of good versus evil being staged over a little girl who sleeps inside dreamy little town, sleep in all its various states including absences of, does the labour of negotiating a fairly wide range of anxieties most of which seem to connect to anticipatory anxiety of failure, which I can only describe as the state one finds oneself in when you start to worry that you won’t be able to sleep while trying to sleep.
March 7, 2010 at 8:31 pm
Excuse that last run on sentence…….my sleeplessness is catching up with me. Lastly, I wonder if there are some forms of labour, such as grad school which are incompatible with ‘achieving a regular state of sleep’?