0:00

I'm Elise Hu. And I'm Josh

0:02

Klein. And we're the hosts of Built

0:04

for Change, a podcast from Accenture. On

0:06

Built for Change, we're talking to business leaders from

0:08

every corner of the world that are harnessing change

0:11

to reinvent the future of their business.

0:13

We're discussing ideas like the importance

0:15

of ethical AI or how productivity

0:18

soars when companies truly listen to

0:20

what their employees value.

0:21

These are insights that leaders need to know

0:24

to stay ahead. So subscribe to Built

0:26

for Change wherever you get your podcasts.

0:28

Welcome

0:31

to the New Books Network. Hello,

0:35

my name is Michael Johnston. And

0:37

today I have Dr. Eric Hsu, host

0:40

and creator of Sociology of Everything podcast

0:42

and lecturer of sociology in the Justice

0:44

and Society Academic Unit with

0:46

the University of South Australia. And

0:49

Kato Ikebene, senior lecturer in

0:51

sociology at Lippert

0:54

University. And

0:56

today we are coming together to

0:58

talk about Technosleep Frontiers

1:00

Fictions Futures by Paul Macmillan, 2023.

1:05

Thank you

1:05

for joining me today. Thanks for having us. Thanks

1:07

for having us. Yeah, thanks. So

1:11

to get started, what brought

1:13

you two together and others, authors,

1:16

to put this book together?

1:21

So there's five

1:24

of us who are co-authors on the book. There's

1:27

Eric and myself, and there's also Professor Simon

1:29

Williams, Dr. Mike

1:31

Greeney and Professor Robert Meadows, all

1:34

in the UK. So Simon Williams, if

1:36

anybody's read anything about sociology of sleep,

1:39

you might have come across Simon, Simon's name

1:41

before. So he's been working in this field for

1:43

a long time. And I think Simon was

1:45

probably the connection that brought the group of

1:47

us together. We've all had an

1:49

interest in sleep. We've all been working

1:51

on various aspects of sleep

1:53

from a sociological or a

1:56

kind of a humanities perspective for a while.

1:59

And we just kind of.

1:59

and came together to talk about

2:02

our mutual interests and a

2:04

few years later the book is the

2:06

product of

2:08

that. Yeah I think of sleep

2:10

almost like suicide in Durkheim

2:13

right? Sleep sounds like something very individual

2:15

like you get in bed at night and go to sleep by yourself

2:17

or with somebody other but somebody

2:20

else but

2:22

it's kind of you deciding when to go to bed or

2:24

not to go to bed however it's not. It's not

2:26

right? Techno sleep is

2:30

something social is it not? Yeah

2:32

well absolutely and I should say that unlike

2:35

suicide all of us sleep right?

2:37

And it's one of those things that all of us

2:40

do and we

2:42

all have issues potentially

2:44

with how we sleep and we all have thoughts

2:47

about how we sleep but it's kind of

2:49

curious that for much

2:51

of you know the history of sociology is

2:53

kind of left on you know

2:56

on the margins of the discipline and

2:59

so our interests really kind

3:01

of formed you know for some of us

3:04

probably about 20 years ago so there's

3:06

some other of us than more recently

3:09

but we're you know I think

3:11

really trying to not just to study sleep from a sociological

3:13

perspective but to develop it as a legitimate

3:16

object of research across the field and across

3:18

the social sciences but yes

3:20

absolutely sleep is a social issue

3:22

and I think we can especially see this with the

3:25

concept of techno sleep. Katie did

3:27

you want to maybe jump in here and kind of

3:30

yeah tease that out?

3:31

Yeah so

3:33

like Eric was saying you know sleep is one of those

3:36

fundamental biological

3:37

needs you know

3:38

we all have to sleep but as

3:40

sociologists we see sleep very

3:43

much as something that's embedded within our social

3:45

structures our interactions and especially

3:48

our relationships so how I

3:50

sleep has to be negotiated with others

3:52

how it has to fit around the demands of

3:54

our social lives our work patterns

3:57

all of these things how well we sleep where

3:59

we sleep, when we sleep, are all impacted

4:02

by our relationships with other people.

4:05

And in terms of techno sleep, we

4:08

really see this as, you know, as we

4:10

were trying to theorize, how

4:13

do we understand this coming together of sleep

4:15

and technology, seeing technology

4:17

as kind of an integral aspect of

4:20

how we organize our sleep and how we do our

4:22

sleep, and how we understand sleep

4:24

as well today. Yeah,

4:27

so Kitty, what are some of these different types

4:29

of technology that that you're

4:31

thinking of when you say technology

4:34

and its impact on sleep?

4:37

Oh, well, how far back do you

4:39

want to go? Let's

4:43

focus on maybe even just like the last, you know,

4:46

since the 2000s, right? Yeah, well,

4:49

I think one of the things we start off

4:51

thinking about in the book is how

4:54

technology, especially around

4:57

sleep science, and kind of

4:59

the birth of sleep science, and

5:01

those kind of technologies of the sleep lab and sleep

5:04

medicine have really influenced how we understand

5:06

sleep today. You know, those

5:08

technologies that sleep science

5:11

really influences

5:14

how we how we think about sleep

5:16

and how we understand our sleep. You know,

5:18

we all kind of think of sleep now as being a cycle.

5:21

It's broken up into these discrete stages,

5:24

you know, REM sleep, the dreaming sleep,

5:26

deep sleep, light sleep. So technology

5:29

undoubtedly plays an underlying role

5:32

in how we, you know, how we think about

5:34

sleep to start with. So

5:37

that's kind of a foundation of where we're coming

5:39

from in the book. And then we start

5:41

to think about the

5:44

new technologies that are around

5:46

today that can impact on our sleep

5:49

and are maybe changing some of those relationships

5:51

that we have with our sleep. So

5:54

I don't know if Eric wants

5:56

to elaborate.

5:56

Well, I was just going to say also that there's

5:59

also a sense in the book. which technology intersects

6:01

with sleep in a very mundane way. So

6:04

it is really interesting,

6:07

very worthwhile for us to focus

6:09

on things like CPAP

6:12

machines, all the

6:14

technologies that help us better understand

6:16

sleep in a certain way. But just think of also

6:18

like pillows or

6:21

beds, alarm clocks, some

6:24

very basic technologies that just kind of sit

6:26

in the background of our everyday lives. But

6:28

these are also technological ways

6:30

in which sleep is done. So one

6:33

of the conceits of this book is

6:36

that we're not just talking about

6:38

electronics and digital technologies.

6:41

There's a sense in which techno sleep also encapsulates

6:44

all of these other things in our lives, are

6:46

these artifacts and built environments.

6:48

All of that somehow amounts to a type

6:50

of techno sleep. Bedrooms

6:54

are kind of even a phenomenon, right? And how houses

6:56

are built and where people sleep at. Is

6:59

that correct? Yes. I mean,

7:01

if you like, I'm not sure if you do

7:03

this, but anytime you go to

7:05

like a museum, especially like a living museum,

7:07

whether that be like a castle, especially

7:10

where Katie resides,

7:12

there's probably quite a few of those or these huge

7:14

estates. And you see like beds

7:16

of yesteryear. And it's like kind of amazing.

7:19

They were set up somewhat differently, and

7:22

what people did in beds, and how

7:24

they slept, and where they slept, and who they

7:27

slept with, how sleep has become increasingly

7:29

privatized in some contexts.

7:32

These are the things that as sociologists

7:34

we are intensely interested in, and that

7:36

also crop up when we're writing this book about

7:38

techno sleep. Even hotels

7:41

are quite curious. If you think about them as

7:43

a strange in our every familiar day

7:45

life, we don't think about the person

7:47

who may have slept there the week before,

7:49

even the night before, and how

7:52

it's

7:52

our own private room. However, it's rather public

7:54

on any given day. It's just assigned

7:57

to one person at a time.

7:59

And I think it's thinking about sleeping

8:02

in hotels. I don't know if it's just me. I

8:04

don't think it is. You can never sleep

8:06

well on the phone.

8:09

So that sleep environment, it really impacts

8:11

on how we're able to sleep. So

8:14

where we sleep is a key thing.

8:16

Now,

8:19

we started to talk about medicine

8:21

and pharmaceutical products and how they

8:24

are used to help us

8:26

sleep. So has sleep become part

8:28

of this medical complex, medical

8:31

industrial complex?

8:34

Yeah, I think that argument has been

8:37

made by people like Simon Williams,

8:40

Harry Barbie as well, in the past

8:42

that the medicalization of sleep

8:45

works to support these multi-billion dollar

8:47

industries that are attempting to sell us

8:49

better sleep through consumerism.

8:53

So sleeping pills says something that I've

8:56

been studying for a long time, a particular interest

8:58

of mine. And undoubtedly,

9:01

there's a huge market for sleeping

9:03

pills globally today. And

9:05

we can indeed see that kind of industrial

9:07

medical complex at work, I think,

9:10

through these complex interactions between

9:13

farmer industries and doctors and health

9:15

care systems and patients. Perhaps

9:18

more in the US, it's more kind of more overt

9:21

than in other places like the UK. But

9:25

I would say so.

9:27

And I should also mention, one of the things

9:29

we do in this book is

9:31

we oftentimes make a simple

9:34

story more complex. And

9:36

I think one of the things that's been happening

9:38

in the sociology of sleep, especially around the medicalization

9:41

of sleep, is to say that it's not just

9:43

simply this linear thing that happens,

9:46

meaning sleep is becoming more medicalized

9:48

and that is it. There's

9:51

been distinctions drawn about,

9:53

for example, are there certain types, are there certain

9:55

aspects of sleep that are becoming more medicalized,

9:58

at least in terms of how they're framed. in

10:01

the popular news media. So there's a really

10:03

interesting work that Simon did with some of his colleagues

10:06

around how sleep is culturally represented

10:09

in newspapers. And one of the things they

10:11

came up with, one of the findings they came up with

10:13

was the fact that there's some

10:15

aspects of sleep like insomnia which might be

10:17

described in more psychological terms, but

10:20

when it comes to something like snoring, it's

10:22

much more medicalized and it's framed more medically.

10:24

So I guess really it's about having

10:27

a more differentiated understanding of how

10:30

sleep is being medicalized. And

10:33

this also kind of links to something that I know

10:35

Katie has done a lot of research out, which is around the pharmaceuticalization

10:39

of sleep and how pharmaceuticalization

10:41

and medicalization are related but

10:43

not quite the same thing.

10:46

Is that right, Katie?

10:48

Yeah, definitely. So I'm more

10:50

knowledgeable about the UK

10:53

healthcare content. So that's where most of my

10:55

work has been based in the UK. And

10:57

that's definitely something that we've been trying to

11:00

kind of pull apart, this pharmaceuticalization

11:03

of sleep from its medicalization,

11:05

in particular around insomnia.

11:08

So insomnia is this kind of curious

11:11

entity where it's

11:13

kind of a sleepy sort of, but it's also a symptom

11:15

of lots of other things. And it's

11:18

kind of a normalized thing. Everybody's

11:20

going to have bouts of insomnia at

11:22

some point. It might be to do with

11:24

what's going on in your life or related

11:28

to some other medication that you're taking,

11:30

for example. So it's really quite difficult

11:32

to pin down, to get that diagnosis

11:35

of having insomnia in the

11:37

UK. And at

11:39

the same time in the UK, there's this move to

11:41

the depharmaceuticalization of insomnia.

11:44

So there's a lot of pressure on

11:47

general practitioners here to not prescribe

11:49

hypnotics to treat insomnia, or

11:52

if they prescribe them only for really short

11:54

periods of time.

11:56

So there's

11:56

these countervailing

11:59

pressures going on.

11:59

on around what happens. From

12:02

our research, what we found was actually happening was

12:04

that practitioners,

12:07

medical practitioners, were still prescribing

12:09

pharmaceuticals to remedy

12:11

to treat insomnia, but they weren't necessarily

12:14

prescribing hypnotics. They started to prescribe

12:16

other things, like antidepressants

12:18

or antipsychotics, or people started

12:21

to buy over-the-counter medications or take

12:23

antihistamines. So the pharmacology

12:26

of nighttime sleep is much more varied

12:28

and much more complex than

12:31

you might think by just looking at the statistics

12:33

around the prescriptions of hypnotics.

12:36

Wow, that's interesting because

12:38

I'm thinking of this as being sort

12:40

of a rationalization of sleep, not

12:42

trying to create a natural cycle, but instead

12:44

a normalized cycle in which everybody

12:47

is, well, almost just embodying

12:49

sleep and being something that

12:52

is just routine, almost like

12:54

a machine. This is when you ought to be sleeping,

12:56

and this is when you are to be awake.

12:59

Yeah, it's so interesting, isn't

13:01

it, I think, around these norms of sleep.

13:03

So that's something else that we had so many long,

13:07

interesting discussions about, like what is

13:09

normal sleep, and what are the

13:11

norms? What do people think that

13:13

they should be doing? And why do they think that? And

13:15

what are people actually doing? And how is that actually

13:18

quite different sometimes? So

13:20

I think we all kind of think, oh, we're

13:22

supposed to sleep at nighttime. We're supposed

13:24

to have this six to eight hour consolidated

13:27

block of sleep, and that's what normal sleep is.

13:30

And that's what people are trying to achieve. And

13:33

deviations from that are what become kind of medicalized

13:35

or problematized, and people are seeking

13:37

remedies. Actually,

13:40

that isn't how a lot of people

13:43

do sleep. So

13:45

there's lots of different groups within societies

13:47

that experience sleep very, very differently.

13:51

People working night shifts, all those

13:53

doctors, nurses, cab drivers,

13:55

people in the hospitality industries that have

13:57

to work at night. There's sleep going to be. really

14:00

different to this imagined norm, but

14:02

not necessarily problematic

14:04

for them.

14:06

So this might be a good

14:08

juncture to talk about how social

14:10

categories like race, ethnicity, sex, gender,

14:13

class and education influence the amount

14:15

and patterns in which people sleep. Are

14:18

there inequities or differences

14:21

from one category to the next in

14:24

the sleep cycles that we as

14:26

humans have or don't have?

14:29

That's probably one of the core themes of the book

14:31

actually. And also arguably

14:33

one of the core themes of our work, right? As sociologists

14:36

who are interested in sleep. And I think sleep

14:38

is like fascinating for a number of reasons,

14:41

but the thing that really sticks

14:43

out to me about sleep and studying it from a sociological

14:46

perspective is that you aren't just looking at sleep

14:48

in a vacuum. You know, sleep

14:50

is invariably linked and

14:52

it intersects with so many other facets

14:55

of our lives. So, you know,

14:57

there's a way in which, yes, we are interested in

14:59

sleep, but sleep is also a window

15:01

into all these other interests

15:04

and long standing debates that people

15:07

have around things like gender

15:09

and race and class. And

15:13

how do we see this? I mean, just look at how

15:15

sleep intersects with like, capitalism,

15:19

there's been a fair work on this, especially

15:21

in terms of social theorizing. And,

15:24

you know, Simon's written this really interesting

15:26

work about this is quite early on, the commodification

15:29

of sleep. So in what ways

15:31

is sleeping pot and sold? And all

15:33

you ever need to do to see this is

15:36

just to like fly a long haul flight. And obviously

15:38

being out here in Australia, like everything

15:40

pretty much is a long haul flight. But

15:43

once, I'm not sure what I'm telling all of this, but once

15:45

I got upgraded into business class

15:48

and I just distinctly remember like

15:50

peeking back to economy class. And

15:53

then obviously seeing everyone else in business,

15:55

he would pay exorbitant amounts of money to

15:57

be, you know, where they are. And

15:59

then, so, seeing these group of people who just

16:01

looked wrecked. You know, the midnight

16:03

flight, they just looked wrecked. You

16:06

know, certainly coming off the plane, but even

16:08

while we were on the flight

16:10

flying. And so there's

16:12

a number of ways in which we

16:15

can see sleep refracts and reflects

16:17

social inequalities. And

16:20

certainly this also applies to technologies,

16:22

but one clear one is just

16:24

like how our sleep disruptions

16:26

managed, and certainly

16:28

in the domestic setting. That was probably one of the early concerns

16:31

of a lot of sleep sociologists, especially in the UK.

16:34

So I'm thinking of people like Sarah Arbor

16:36

and Rob Meadows, Jenny Hislop,

16:38

they did some really interesting, fascinating research

16:40

just about like who manages

16:43

sleep

16:44

disruptions at night. And it probably

16:46

won't surprise your listeners to

16:48

learn that unfortunately this is highly gendered,

16:51

this is gendered practice, right? And

16:54

so you do see differences

16:57

in sleep quantity, sleep quality,

16:59

and again, all of these have to do

17:02

with our social characteristics, our social

17:04

variables. And you know, one of the things

17:07

before I kick things, I kick things back to Katie

17:09

is that even the idea of

17:11

like having a private place

17:13

to sleep, a secure place to sleep,

17:15

that's something that's unfortunately not something

17:18

that we can take all for granted. You

17:20

know, what does it mean to be homeless? I

17:23

think it's probably not having a secure sleeping

17:25

area. You know, it's having very

17:27

tenuous sleep, having sleep that's in

17:31

the public realm. And

17:34

so it's, though this also, studying

17:36

sleep is also to some extent a political matter.

17:39

We are talking about the politics, you

17:41

know, the very consequential politics

17:43

of how people sleep, how sleep is framed,

17:46

and how sleep is experienced.

17:49

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17:51

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18:02

Stop playing. What? Get

18:04

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18:05

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18:07

you to stop playing and get out of here so I can game on that Chromebook. Got

18:11

it. Discover

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18:18

I'm Elise Hugh. And I'm Josh

18:20

Klein. And we're the hosts of Built

18:22

for Change, a podcast from Accenture.

18:24

On Built for Change, we're talking to business leaders

18:26

from every corner of the world that are harnessing

18:28

change to reinvent the future of their

18:31

business.

18:31

We're discussing ideas like the importance

18:33

of ethical AI or how productivity

18:36

soars when companies truly listen to

18:38

what their employees value. These are insights

18:41

that leaders need to know to stay ahead. So

18:43

subscribe to Built for Change wherever you

18:45

get your podcasts. Katie,

18:49

what are your thoughts?

18:50

Yeah. I mean, I

18:52

completely agree. And like Eric, I really

18:54

see this idea of inequalities. There's

18:56

been at the crux of the book and

18:58

as I work as sociologists.

19:01

And I'll say a couple of things from my

19:04

particular interests. So very much

19:07

around the gendered division

19:09

of labor during the night and night care work

19:12

that, as Eric said, you probably

19:14

won't be surprised, tends to fall to women

19:16

rather than men. So that's

19:18

something I'm interested in in my current work

19:21

as well. So we talk

19:23

about this a bit in the book. And I talk

19:25

about this in... So for one chapter of the book,

19:27

I tracked my own sleep and

19:30

I wanted to see how that felt and what

19:32

it meant to me. And one of the

19:34

most

19:36

kind of

19:37

important findings, I think, and became

19:40

apparent quite quickly was that my

19:42

sleep is not my own. I have young

19:44

children. I have three young children. And

19:48

my sleep is constantly disturbed

19:50

by the care. Those

19:53

care needs, those care requirements for

19:55

my children. So

19:57

my up might be telling me, oh, you know,

20:00

need to be in bed by this time and this time, set

20:02

a sleep

20:02

routine. You need to get

20:04

better quality sleep. Don't drink caffeine

20:06

after this time and it will improve your life. I'm thinking,

20:09

look, I can't do any. I've got three

20:11

kids. They're not going to let me, you know, if

20:13

they need to leave at midnight, they're going to

20:15

come and wake me up. And at the time I was

20:17

writing the book, I had a young baby who

20:20

was obviously still needing to be fed

20:23

in the night and things

20:25

like that. So that care work at night,

20:28

that gender division of labour and that care

20:30

work is such an important factor on

20:33

the quality of sleep, on the amount of

20:35

sleep that men and women can get.

20:38

It's not saying that no men do care work at night.

20:40

I'm sure Eric might have something to

20:43

add on that respect. And my husband

20:45

certainly does get up and help care for the children.

20:48

But when I was on maternity leave, we

20:50

divided that between us as he was going

20:52

to work and I would be the one who would wake

20:54

up and look after the kids. And

20:57

I think what's interesting

20:59

to me now as well with the aging populations

21:02

that we have is that lots of people have older

21:04

relatives as well who they also care for

21:06

during the night, whether they live with them

21:08

or not. So that could be a phone call from a care

21:10

home or, you know, from

21:14

a worried relative with dementia

21:16

who's woken up during the night. So

21:18

there's all those kind of aspects to it

21:20

as well. That kind of, so, you know, it might

21:23

be referred to as the third shift. You know, we

21:25

do the second shift with the childcare and the third

21:28

shift, the emotional labour of trying to,

21:30

you know, care for everybody during the nighttime

21:32

as well. And

21:35

then on the other side of it, another thing I'm really

21:37

interested in is the impact of chronic illness

21:40

on sleep. So, you know,

21:43

there's lots of people out there with sleep disorders.

21:46

That's one thing. But then there's all these other

21:48

health conditions as well that really can impact

21:51

on nighttime sleep. So I mentioned dementia,

21:54

but also cancer is another

21:56

big one and cancer medications can really

21:58

impact on sleep and sleep. pain

22:01

is a huge source of sleep

22:03

disruption. So there's

22:05

all these kind of inequalities there that

22:08

build up, and I think

22:10

that nighttime impact and then the

22:13

knock-on impact that has for people during the daytime of

22:16

not having that quality sleep at night as well

22:18

is a definite source of social

22:21

inequality.

22:23

And so as you can kind of see, there's

22:27

like no facet of our lives sleep doesn't

22:29

touch, right? I mean you just – you pick

22:31

another topic, you pick another concept, pick another theory.

22:34

Sleep kind of has something to do with it, or at least

22:36

there's a potential for that to happen. And so

22:39

there's I think a concerted effort then

22:42

to not just kind of ring fence

22:45

sleep as this wolf, this very isolated

22:48

part of our lives that can be studied

22:50

in kind of a subfield in sociology. There's

22:53

a sense in which sleep

22:55

kind of can factor into any

22:57

aspect of social life.

23:00

And so because of that, that

23:03

makes the topic very rich for analysis,

23:06

for further investigation. And

23:09

certainly when it comes to techno sleep, I mean

23:12

I should say one thing. It's the beginning of a conversation

23:14

and certainly not the end of one, right? We're trying

23:16

really to just capture some

23:18

of the key insights we think might get this conversation

23:21

going in a productive direction. But

23:24

as we know at the last

23:26

section of the book, yeah,

23:28

I mean it's just ripe for being

23:30

further extended to be

23:34

more critically scrutinized. We

23:37

just thought that this is

23:39

a very exciting concept, exciting

23:41

topic to put out there,

23:44

and we're looking for forward people

23:46

to engage with their work. Yeah, you

23:48

know, I was an urban and an environmental

23:51

sociologist and even

23:53

thinking about economic sociology,

23:55

thinking about how cities

23:58

that never sleep, like Las Vegas.

23:59

somehow they play with lighting, but even your

24:02

own local restaurant like an Applebee's,

24:04

I worked there for six years prior

24:07

to going on to college and then

24:10

making my way into academia eventually, but

24:13

they mess with the lighting to kind of

24:15

give signals as to you've been here for a really long

24:17

time and lighting going up and

24:20

down depending on the time of day to rush

24:22

people in or out depending on what

24:24

the expectation is or

24:26

closing time at a bar when they turn the lights on

24:29

and say it's time to back up and leave,

24:32

kind of, well, it's a way technology

24:35

is physically creating

24:37

an experience for the bodies that

24:40

are inhabiting that environment.

24:42

I mean one of the early works in Sociology

24:44

of Sleep was Murray Melbins' NIDA's

24:47

Frontier, and it like puts forward

24:49

a crazy idea really in some respects,

24:51

maybe not so crazy for some people, which

24:53

is that there is the potential

24:57

for the night time as a time

24:59

for sleep to disappear, just like it's a frontier

25:02

to be explored and conquered, you know, and

25:05

he entertains the idea that

25:07

one day the elements of sleep

25:10

will be unbundled

25:13

and made optional. So you have a kind

25:15

of a sleep option society. Now, we're

25:18

obviously not going to simply just endorse that and

25:20

say, yep, that's what's going to happen where no one's going to sleep

25:22

anymore in the future and that's it. But we

25:24

are in the book also discussing about sleep futures.

25:27

Do you think that's right, Katie? It's

25:29

a core theme of the book that we're interested in how

25:31

sleep futures are in the making, and

25:33

they're also negotiated and contested.

25:36

Yeah,

25:37

and I think that idea

25:40

of NIDA's Frontier is something that we do

25:42

draw on in the book, the frontier

25:44

aspect of this, and looking at some

25:46

of some of those futures that are being

25:48

imagined, that kind of optionalization

25:51

of sleep through technology is something

25:53

that's very much present in the

25:56

imaginaries about the future of

25:58

sleep. from tech

26:00

industry reports, we looked at all kinds of things,

26:02

media reports, futurists forecasting,

26:05

what sleep would look like in

26:08

the future. And that kind of the optionalization

26:11

of if we sleep and when we sleep and

26:13

where we sleep and how long we sleep and condensing

26:16

our sleep into shorter times. And even,

26:19

you know, how presumably elongating

26:22

athletes for leisure, all these ideas

26:24

have been able to kind of manipulate sleep at

26:26

our will. These are all the imagined

26:28

kind of future scenarios that

26:31

we're dealing with. And like Eric said, it doesn't mean

26:33

that, you know, any one of them is necessarily

26:36

gonna come into play and dominate, but

26:38

they're all kind of there. And, you know,

26:41

when the tech industry are interested

26:43

in these things, we can imagine that

26:46

actually we're gonna start to see more kind

26:48

of technology along these lines coming

26:50

into play. I like

26:52

the way they're about to be framed in this book as

26:55

not a book to put techno

26:57

sleep to bed per se, but instead

26:59

to awaken a conversation, like

27:02

let's get up and let's start talking about techno sleep.

27:05

It's very inviting.

27:07

And I'm glad that that was part of our conversation

27:10

today as, you know,

27:12

this isn't the end of the conversation,

27:14

but the beginning.

27:16

Yeah, yeah, definitely. And I think,

27:19

you know, one of the things, so

27:21

techno sleep we see is this coming together

27:23

with sleep and technology, but we're not arguing

27:26

that everybody is now a techno

27:28

sleeper or we can't escape technology.

27:31

You know, on the contrary, you know, we're also interested

27:33

in the resistance to techno

27:36

sleep, the times when sleep

27:38

technology relationships kind of break

27:40

down or they come apart. And

27:43

we think that, you know, that also can give us some really

27:45

fascinating insights into what it is

27:47

we actually value about sleep collectively.

27:50

So where sleep belongs in the rhythms

27:52

of our daily lives. So often,

27:55

you know, we think about sleep as being this biological

27:57

process, something that's natural and spontaneous.

28:00

universal, you know, our periodic

28:03

escape

28:03

from the demands of our waking lives

28:06

where we can switch off. And technological

28:08

encroachment into that space

28:11

for some of us can be quite an unwelcome thing,

28:13

you know, we don't want that, we want

28:15

to keep this kind of private time

28:18

for ourselves. So

28:20

that this techno sleep for some people might

28:22

represent a sort of an alienation

28:24

from what it is we actually love about sleep.

28:28

So that's, you know, another aspect of

28:30

the station that we're really interested

28:32

in having.

28:34

Excellent. Well,

28:37

unfortunately, we've come to the end

28:40

of our time today. However, I really want

28:42

to know where is this research going from here?

28:45

Is there going to be a techno

28:47

sleep part two? Is it going to

28:49

advance into individual books

28:51

or? Yeah, Katie, what

28:53

are your plans from here forth?

28:57

So

28:59

one of the avenues I'm really interested in exploring

29:01

further is around kind

29:03

of care and sleep and

29:06

how technology might factor into that. So

29:08

that's something I'm looking forward to. I'm thinking

29:10

about it now, thinking about those

29:13

next steps down that, around the rhythms of our everyday

29:15

life and how technology can help

29:18

or hinder those relationships.

29:21

Yeah. And

29:23

one of the things I discussed in the book is

29:27

just how, yeah,

29:30

what entities are thought to sleep is kind of an

29:32

open question. I mean, obviously, we're interested in

29:34

human sleep in

29:36

this book. But

29:39

the human beings aren't the only ones, the only

29:41

beings in the world that sleep. And

29:43

so in what ways is there a technological element

29:45

to all of this? So what

29:48

we spend some time unpacking in the book is

29:51

how technological devices might

29:53

sleep. So obviously, people put devices

29:55

into sleep mode. But this also led

29:58

me to think about how sleep can also be a understood

30:00

not just in literal terms but in metaphorical

30:02

terms. And so one of the things I'm

30:04

looking then to explore is that way

30:07

of which we can understand sleep as a multiple

30:10

object and what ways

30:13

can sleep be understood from many different

30:16

angles as constituting

30:18

different things through the Prisma

30:20

metaphor. And how might that also help us understand

30:23

how sleep is experienced and constructed

30:25

by indigenous

30:28

groups for example like in New Zealand. So that's

30:30

one of the projects that I'm working on at the moment. And

30:33

I just think there's just

30:35

so much really that you can kind of unravel

30:39

from this book. And

30:42

so I'm

30:43

not going to say how we're going to be able to cover it

30:45

all but we hope that it is a worthwhile

30:47

thing for your listeners to engage

30:50

with because hopefully you've gathered

30:54

from this conversation a very rich topic. Yes

30:57

one that's going to

30:59

take a while. It's going to be one of those reads that you

31:01

just continue reading and getting a new perspective each

31:04

time we

31:06

open your book because there's

31:09

so many ways in which it can be applied and depending

31:11

on what I'm working on at any given time I may see

31:13

it from a different perspective. That's

31:16

the thing. So thank

31:18

you for this very rich and

31:20

helpful book and for the conversation today that we

31:23

had. Thank

31:25

you. Thank you very much. This is

31:27

another episode of New Books and Sociology.

31:30

Thank you for your time today.