bordarretazos

Escribe Arthur C. Clarke: «Even if we cannot abolish sleep altogether, it would be an immense gain if we could concentrate it into a very few hours of really deep unconsciousness, chosen when convenient.

Perhaps we shall always need the ‘balm of tired minds’, but we will not have to spend a third of our lives applying it. On-the other hand, there are occasions when protracted unconsciousness would be very valuable; it would be welcomed, for example, by convalescents recuperating after operations – and, above all, by space-travellers on lengthy missions. It is in this connection that serious thought is now being given to the possibility of suspended animation, which we will need if we are ever to reach the stars, or travel more than a very few light-years from the neighbourhood of the Sun.

It seems very likely that the development of global TV and cheap telephone networks cutting across all time zones will lead inevitably to a world organized on a 24-hour basis. This alone will make it imperative to minimise sleep; and it appears that the means for doing so is already at hand.

Several years ago, the Russians put on the market a neat little ‘Electric sleep apparatus’ about the size of a shoe-box and weighing only five pounds. Through electrodes resting on the eyelids and the nape, low-frequency pulses are applied to the cerebral cortex, and the subject promptly lapses into profound slumber. Though this device was apparently designed for medical use, it has been reported that many Soviet citizens are using it to cut down their sleeping time to a few hours a day.»

. ¿Por qué carajos le parece deseable reducir nuestras horas de sueño en lugar de aumentarlas? ¿Qué tan comprometido tiene que estar uno con la idea de progreso como para proponer restarle las horas de sueño a uno mismo y a los demás?