Sleep in a Sleepless Age

In this paper, I explore the social dimensions of sleep as it relates to high-tech work and its cultural contexts. I discuss the implications of sleep, and its cultural vilification, for the families of high-tech professionals. In particular, I develop the notion of sleep as care, and of women as (still) the de facto care givers, and the ways in which these two persisting social facts interact with sleep’s denigration in the high-tech social world. I consider the emerging trend of what proponents call ‘co-sleeping’ in light of these concepts. My aim here is to develop a working theory of sleep as cultural venue for gendered expressions about autonomy, dependence, care, and need within a context of corporate capitalism in general, and information technology in particular.