0604硅谷夜未眠：为什么科技达人痴迷睡眠技术顺理成章｜经济学人

今天的文章来自The Economist 5月18日发布于Business版块的一篇文章： Why the techie obsession with sleep technology makes perfect sense
Schumpeter
熊彼特
Sleepless in Silicon Valley
硅谷夜未眠
Why the techie obsession with sleep technology makes perfect sense
为什么说科技达人痴迷于睡眠技术完全顺理成章
First, close the blackout blinds in your bedroom. Eat dinner at 4pm, and do not eat or drink anything after 6pm. Put on your blue-light blocking glasses at 8pm. Set your bedroom temperature to 67oF (19.4℃) and your electric blanket to 69.8oF (21℃). At 8.45pm, meditate for ve to ten minutes. Switch on your deep-wave sound machine. Put on your Oura sleep-tracking ring.
You are now, nally, ready for slumber. This may all sound a bit over the top. But this is the “sleep hygiene” routine described in a recent blog post by Bryan Johnson, who sold his previous company to eBay for $800m and is now chief executive of Kernel, a startup developing brain computer interfaces.
He admits that his sleep routine has “decimated my social life”, and that his partner sleeps in a dierent room, but says all this trouble is worth it, because it has boosted his level of “deep sleep” by as much as 157%. He has bought Oura rings for all his employees.
首先,拉上卧室的遮光窗帘。下午4点吃晚饭，6点以后禁食禁水。晚上8点戴上防蓝光眼镜。将卧室温度设在19.4℃,将电热毯设在21℃。8点45分，冥想5到10分钟。打开深度睡眠声波播放器。戴上Oura睡眠追踪戒指。现在，你终于一切就绪，可以安睡了。这一切听起来可能有些夸张，但却是近期发布的一篇博客文章所描述的“睡眠卫生”程序。作者布赖恩约翰逊(Bryan Johnson)现在是开发脑机接口技术的创业公司Kernel的CEO,之前以8亿美元将自己的上一家公司卖给了eBay。约翰逊坦言这套入睡程序已经“毁了自己的社交生活”，为此他还与伴侣分房睡觉。但他表示所有这些付出都是值得的，因为这让他的“深度睡眠”水平差不多提高了157%。他给公司所有员工都购置了Oura戒指。
blackout[n]
a sudden and temporary loss of consciousness, vision, or memory遮光；暂时性眼前发黑，暂时性失忆
例：He told his doctor he had been experiencing blackouts.他告诉医生说他总是突然眼前发黑。
meditate/mdtet/ [vi]
If you meditate you remain in a silent and calm state for a period of time, as part of a religious training or so that you are more able to deal with the problems and difficulties of everyday life. 冥想；深思
例：I was meditating, and reached a higher state of consciousness.我正在冥想，并进入了一种更高的意识境界。
sound a bit over the top听起来可能有些夸张
decimate /dsmet/[vt]
To decimate something such as a group of people or animals means to destroy a very large number of them. 摧毁；大量毁灭
例：The pollution could decimate the river"s thriving population of kingfishers.污染可能大量毁灭在这条河茁壮成长的翠鸟群。
Mr Johnson does not expect other people to copy his routine, but made it public to encourage the sharing of sleep habits and tips. Like many other techies, he regards sleep hygiene as an eective way to maintain mental health, boost cognition and enhance productivity.
In its most recent funding round, backers of Oura, the Finnish maker of the high-tech ring, included the co-founders of YouTube and Twitch, along with alumni of Facebook, Skype and Box.com.
The ring’s most famous user is Jack Dorsey, the boss of Twitter, whose unusual wellness regime—which also incorporates near-infrared saunas, radiation-blocking Faraday tents, fasting and cryotherapy—prompted the New York Times this month to dub him “Gwyneth Paltrow for Silicon Valley”. For tech tycoons, it seems, sleep is the new tness.
约翰逊将自己的这套做法公之于众，倒不是指望他人仿效，而是为鼓励人们分享自己的睡眠习惯和小贴士。和其他许多科技达人一样，约翰逊认为睡眠卫生是保持心理健康、提升认知和提高效率的有效方法。生产那款高科技戒指的芬兰0ura公司最近一轮融资的投资者包括YouTube和Twitch的联合创始人、Facebook、Skype和Box.com等公司的前员工等。Oura戒指最著名的用户是Twitter的老板杰克多尔西(Jack Dorsey)，他有一套独特的养生方法——除了佩戴Oura戒指，还使用近红外桑拿房、电磁屏蔽帐篷、禁食和冷冻疗法。因此上月他被《纽约时报》戏称为“硅谷的格温妮丝*帕特洛”。看起来，对科技大亨来说，睡眠成了新型健身。
fast [v]
to eat no food for a period of time禁食；绝食；斋戒
例：Patients must fastfor six hours before having the procedure.病人在手术前必须禁食六小时。
— fasting [u]
例：periods of fasting禁食期 a time of fastingand prayer斋戒祈祷时间
dub sb sth.戏称…为…
If someone or something is dubbeda particular thing, they are given that description or name. 把…称为
例：Today"s session has been widely dubbed as a "make or break" meeting.今天的会议被大众称为“不成则散”的会议。
Those who want to monitor and improve their sleep have no shortage of gadgets to choose from. As well as electric blankets and mattress-chillers, sound machines and smart rings, there are also smart pillows, sleep-tracking watches and bracelets, intelligent sleep masks, brain-stimulating headbands, bedside sleep sensors and countless sleep-monitoring apps.
The market for sleep technology was worth $58bn in 2014 and is expected to grow to $81bn by 2020, according to Persistence, a market-research rm. Big companies in the eld include household names such as Apple, Bose, Nokia and Philips. After Mr Dorsey’s enthusiastic endorsement, the Oura rings are back-ordered by four to six weeks.
对于那些想要监测和改善自身睡眠的人，可以选择的各式玩意儿不少。除了电热毯、床垫降温器、声音睡眠仪和智能戒指外,还有智能枕头、睡眠追踪手表和手环、智能睡眠面罩、大脑感应头带、床边睡眠传感器，以及数不胜数的睡眠监测应用。市场调研公司Persistence的数据显示，睡眠科技市场在2014年价值580亿美元，到2020年有望增至810亿美元。苹果、Bose、诺基亚和飞利浦等家喻户晓的大公司都涉足该领域。经过多尔西热情地“代言”，Oura戒指的交货期推迟了4到6周。
household names ：a person or thing that is very well known 家喻户晓的人(或物)
endorse [vt]
If you endorse someone or something, you say publicly that you support or approve of them.代言；赞同；公开支持
例：I can endorse their opinion wholeheartedly.我可以全心全意地支持他们的观点。
endorsement [n]代言；赞同；公开支持
The mania for sleep technology makes perfect sense for the tech industry, combining as it does several existing trends. For a start, it ts with the industry’s metrics-driven worldview.
Techies obsess about okrs (objectives and key results), kpis (key performance indicators) and digital-analytics dashboards showing the performance of specic products and features.
Applying similar techniques to sleep and other aspects of their personal lives—an approach known as the “quantied self”—seems a logical step. As those in the startup world like to say, channelling Peter Drucker, a management guru, “what’s measured improves.”
对科技行业来说，睡眠科技热的出现完全顺理成章,因为它把目前的几个趋势结合在了一起。首先，它符合科技行业“用标准说话”的世界观。科技达人痴迷于各种,OKR(目标与关键成果法)、KPI(关键业绩指标法)和显示特定产品及功能之性能的数字分析仪表盘。将类似方法应用于睡眠以及他们个人生活的其他方面，即所谓的“量化自我”,看起来是合情合理的一步。就像创业领域的人喜欢借用管理大师彼得~德鲁克(Peter Drucker)的话，“有衡量就有改进”。
mania /men/[n]
If you say that a person or group has a mania for something, you mean that they enjoy it very much or spend a lot of time on it. ……热；狂热
例：The mania for dinosaurs began in the late 1800s.恐龙热兴起于19世纪晚期。
guru /ɡru/[c]
A guru is a person who some people regard as an expert or leader. 专家；大师
例：Fashion gurus dictate crazy ideas such as squeezing oversized bodies into tight trousers.时装大师们常表达离奇的想法，例如把肥硕的身子塞进紧身裤中。
Sleep-tracking also aligns neatly with Silicon Valley’s cult of productivity, and the constant search for “life hacks” that will make entrepreneurs more eective, ecient and successful.
This ranges from wearing the same clothes every day, Steve Jobs-style (thus avoiding wasting time deciding what to put on), to fastidious tness routines and complicated diets. Elaborate sleep regimes slot right in, because they promise clarity of thought and improved cognitive performance.
They also let people extend their quantied-self and life-hacking eorts into the one part of the day that was previously untouched: shut-eye. Relentlessly pursuing productivity only while you are awake is for wimps. Sleep-tracking means you can do it round the clock. Oura describes its sensor packed ring as a “secret weapon for personal improvement”—another way to get ahead.
睡眠追踪还与硅谷效率至上以及对“生活窍门”的孜孜以求高度一致。他们认为这些诀窍能让企业家更高效、更富成果、更加成功。比如像乔布斯那样每天穿同样的衣服(从而避免在选衣服上浪费时间)、一丝不苟的健身计划，以及复杂的饮食习惯等。精心打造的睡眠保健法与此不谋而合，因为它们声称能让人头脑清晰并提升认知表现。睡眠保健法还让人们量化自我和掌握生活窍门的努力延伸到“睡眠”这一之前未曾触及的时段。只在醒着的时候不懈追求效率不算什么能耐。睡眠追踪让人可以24小时不间断地追求效率。Oura将其装满传感器的戒指描述为“个人提升的秘密武器”，即领先于人的另一种方法。
align with/lan/
If you align something, you place it in a certain position in relation to something else, usually parallel to it. 使对齐；与一致
例：A tripod will be useful to align and steady the camera.三脚架会有助于对齐稳住照相机。
cult [n]
The cultof something is a situation in which people regard that thing as very important or special. 狂热；崇拜
例：...the cult of youth that recently gripped publishing.…近期吸引了出版界的年青人的狂热。
fastidious /fstds, f-/ [a]
If you say that someone is fastidious, you mean that they pay great attention to detail because they like everything to be very neat, accurate, and in good order.一丝不苟的；注重细节的；苛求的
例：...her fastidious attention to historical detail.…她对历史细节极为细致的关注。
Relentlessly [ad]残酷地，无情地
be for wimps懦夫能做到；不算什么能耐
wimp [c]
a weak person who lacks confidence, courage, etc.懦弱的人；胆小鬼
例：I was too much of a wimp[=coward] to confront him.我实在太懦弱了，不敢和他对抗。
round the clock.24小时；做时间状语
Never mind that a study published in 2015, by researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, found that sleep-tracking devices could not accurately measure sleep, and that claims made about them were long on hype and short on solid evidence. Ignore the fact that another study,
published in 2017 by researchers at two medical schools in Chicago, warned of the dangers of “orthosomnia”, dened as a “perfectionistic quest for the ideal sleep in order to optimise daytime function”, as obsessive users of sleep-tech devices self-diagnose sleep disturbances based on dodgy data, or stay awake all night worrying that they are falling behind by not sleeping as eciently as rivals.
麻省总医院(Massachusetts General Hospital)和哈佛医学院的研究人员在2015年发表的一项研究结果发现，睡眠追踪设备并不能准确测量睡眠，人们对这些设备做出的论断也偏于夸大而缺乏实证。但我们对此不必介意。同样地，也不必理会另一项由芝加哥两所医学院的研究人员于2017年发表的研究结果。该研究对“完美睡眠强迫症”(即“极度追求理想睡眠以使白天表现最优")的危害发出了警告，因为痴迷于睡眠技术设备的用户要么根据不可靠的数据自我诊断出了睡眠障碍，要么彻夜不眠，担心自己会因睡眠质量不如对手而落后。
optimise /ptmaz/[vt]
To optimizea plan, system, or machine means to arrange or design it so that it operates as smoothly and efficiently as possible. 优化；使优化
例：The new systems have been optimized for running Microsoft Windows.新系统已经被优化，以便运行微软视窗系统。
obsessive/bssv/ [a]
If someone"s behaviour is obsessive, they cannot stop doing a particular thing or behaving in a particular way. 痴迷的
例：Williams is obsessive about motor racing.威廉斯痴迷于赛车。
It is hardly surprising that techies are not getting enough sleep, given the industry’s culture of long hours, and the widespread notion that for a true entrepreneur, everything else in life is secondary to succeeding at work. The enthusiasm for sleep-tech also ts a larger pattern of using technology to x problems that the industry itself has created.
Is your smartphone too addictive? Here’s an app to help you monitor and track your usage. Are the streets of your city clogged with Ubers? Try an electric scooter instead. Seen this way, the embrace of sleep-tracking is an indictment of the whole culture: it tackles the symptoms of sleep deprivation, but not the disease.
科技行业向来工作时间长，而且人们普遍认为，对于真正的创业者，生活中其他任何事情都比不上事业有成重要。所以科技达人睡眠不足也就不足为奇了。睡眠科技热也符合一个更大的模式，即利用科技来解决科技行业本身造成的问题。智能手机是不是让你过于沉迷其中?有一个应用可以帮你监控和追踪手机的使用情况。城市的大街小巷挤满了优步的网约车?那就试试电动滑板车吧。从这个角度看，对睡眠追踪的追捧折射出整个行业文化的一个弊端——它在解决睡眠被剥夺的问题时治标不治本。
be clogged with…：挤满了…
clog [vt]
When something clogs a hole or place, it blocks it so that nothing can pass through. 堵塞
例：Dirt clogs the pores, causing blemishes.尘垢堵塞了毛孔，由此产生了瑕疵。
Sleepwalking into the future
But resist the temptation to dismiss all this as batty. Sleep-tracking is at exactly the stage that tness-tracking technology was at a decade ago. Now tness trackers (including the Apple Watch) are mainstream and nobody bats an eyelid when people share details of their morning runs on Facebook.
The same could easily happen with sleep-tech. A series of previous examples—including the use of email, the embrace of online shopping, hailing a car with an app, or renting a room in an unfamiliar city from a complete stranger—are a reminder that the seemingly crazy things that Silicon Valley types do today, everyone else may end up doing in a decade’s time. In this case, in their sleep.
梦游到未来
但也不要急于将这一切贬为发神经。睡眠追踪正处于健康追踪技术十年前所处的阶段。如今,包括Apple Watch在内的健康追踪器已经成为主流，没有人会对别人在Facebook上晒的晨跑记录大惊小怪。同样的情况也很容易发生在睡眠技术.上。使用电子邮件、拥抱网上购物、用手机应用叫车，或者从一个素不相识的人那里租下陌生城市里的一个房间....以往一连串的例子提醒人们，硅谷人今天的所作所为看似荒唐，但其他人在十年后可能都会步他们的后尘。而且这次还是闭着眼做的。
sleepwalk [vi]
If someone is sleepwalking, they are walking around while they are asleep. 梦游
例：He once sleepwalked to the middle of the road outside his home at 1 a.m.他有一次凌晨1点钟梦游到了家外面的那条马路中央。
the temptation to do sth. 做……的诱惑
bat an eyelid对……大惊小怪，通常用否定义
bat [vt]
to close and open (your eyes or eyelashes) very quickly several times especially as a way of flirting快速眨眼
例：She smiled and battedher eyelashes at him.她笑着冲他眨眨眼睛。
not bat an eye/eyelash[informal]
: to show no surprise, fear, concern, etc.不露声色；面不改色；眼睛都不眨一下
例：He thought the news would make her upset, but she never batted an eye. [=she did not appear to be upset at all]他原以为这个消息会使她伤心，没想到她没流露出任何表情。
例：He listened without batting an eyelash.他不动声色地听着。