1) shift work is also another capitalist way of intervening in our sleep/wake cycle too, right? At least the night/day aspect. It sort of blurs the boundaries between night and day, doesn't it? I mean, it doesn't affect the number of hours you get as in you still get home and sleep through the morning and afternoon, but it certainly affects night and day, and the typical sleep pattern. It's just another way for capitalism to interfere with the night/day structure. To control our sleep, in a way. Studies have shown that work-related stress, health problems and sleep difficulty is common for shift work- Czeisler's work in a Utah chemical plant, for example (I have a psychology textbook (A-levels all over again!) and there's a whole chapter on the sleep/wake cycle and various studies. I'm not sure if this is relevant entirely, but some biology might be useful. If you're interested I'll bring it in on Friday).
But if so many people are suffering from shift work, why do we still have it in society (aside from the necessities, such as hospitals etc)? Why are car factories working 24/7? The BMW Mini Plant in Oxford works this way. Why? To make more and more money. Produce, produce, produce. Capitalism, capitalism, capitalism. It doesn't care about human needs in this way. It's just another example of capitalism trying to control our sleep. To conquer our sleep like it has everything else- as Cain puts it in the post below, the final frontier! I guess it realizes that we can't physically function without it, so tries to control it instead. OK so maybe I personified it a bit too much...but the point remains!
2) in the same way that shift work affects the night and day, so do 24 hour supermarkets. This is not directly related to sleep, but it again highlights the capitalist interference of the day/night structure. Just why we have 24 hour shops would be interesting to know- was there a demand for something like that? If that's the case, then it reflects just how people are sleeping 'differently'. I don't think a supermarket would spend money keeping a shop open if it didn't think people would shop at that time.
3) night clubs and bars. Again, open til very late. What interests me is just what came first: late opening hours, or the demand for late opening hours? All of this relates to the 24/7 city lifestyle that the group has discussed before.
4) Jet lag- though the reasons for jet lag are obvious, there is a capitalist interpretation here- more and more flights, people flying to do business for one day then flying home the next etc...more and more people are flying because of work. It's as if thousands of miles is no excuse to not attend a meeting. This again affects sleep. Maybe this isn't entirely related to the project, but I felt like putting it anyway...
5) The very nature of the internet is something that exceeds the boundaries of the day/night cycle. It exceeds human beings. It can exist at any time, and anywhere. There is no such thing as night/day online. There is no such thing as time and place, either. And in a world where the internet is slowly spilling over into our reality (as we have seen in the last lecture) could it not be that the internet is (almost) mapping our everyday reality to the point where there is no such thing as night and day here, either? Not in a physical sense, of course. But people are also interacting via the internet, too, as well as other changes in the everyday. Society is almost moulding to this internet age. Has the internet become too powerful, so much so that it will soon remove our night/day boundaries? Again, not in a physical sense. I don't mean to make this about technology- my main focus is on the relationship between internet and sleep.
6) Randy Gardner. Pretty well known case of sleep deprivation. He was 17 and stayed awake for 11 days in 1964. Other people have claimed to have exceeded this record, however.
I also thought it somehow necessary to add this song to the blog, because every time we discuss this project and 'sleep' this song is on loop in the back of my mind, over and over...it's quite distracting.
Hi Jody,
ReplyDeleteGreat post. I'd love to see that psychology textbook, sounds related!
And i particularly liked the part about the internet having no night/day. it reminded me of this really interesting (scary) Guardian article about Amazon:
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/dec/01/week-amazon-insider-feature-treatment-employees-work
interesting the ways in which the no day/night distinction seems to influence the real world on some occasions. probably safe to predict we'll see more and more night work as the internet continues to grow...
Do people think that cases like Randy Gardner are a result of the damaging role of technology, our modern habits in general? or is it a medical condition that people have always suffered from?
Hey, yeah I'll bring it in on Friday then!
ReplyDeleteAnd Amazon is a really good example of a company that truly does have no boundaries. I guess when 24 hour internet is the thing now, a company will take advantage of that. This of course had serious implications for the workers, as we know from the article. The article mentions Panorama's show on the company- if you haven't seen it, it's worth a watch. It's just as scary!
Randy Gardner was more a test/study than the result of any lifestyle, but I just thought it was a good example of what people are capable of. I think some think he might have had 'micro sleeps' throughout the 11 days? I wouldn't say that it relates to the whole technology/capitalism thing, but I just thought it was interesting. At best you could say that maybe it's to do with genetics, but otherwise people just accept him as some sort of superhuman.