The New Yorker explores technology for a good night’s sleep.
Lately, a dreamy abundance of gadgets, fancy pillows, expensive masks, and other non-sex-purposed bedroom paraphernalia have entered the marketplace. They promise a refreshing sleep, or, if that fails, at least an accounting of how much you snore. There would not be enough nights in the wild dark yonder for me to try all these products personally, but fortunately the anguish of others can be a journalist’s good fortune. A bunch of friends, sick and tired of staring at the ceiling, waiting for their mental power switches to flip off, signed on to sample sleep aids and keep diaries during their trials. As if stalled every night in the waiting room of the world’s slowest doctor, these insomniacs had regularly passed their nights memorizing the arrangement of notes on a guitar fretboard, nurturing grudges, hating themselves, thinking about world peace, pretending to be in a submarine, and worrying, Is it Alzheimer’s, or worse?
