Bauman, Z.
2000 Time and Space Reunited. In Time Society Vol. 9 (2/3): 171-185
2000 Time and Space Reunited. In Time Society Vol. 9 (2/3): 171-185
Start: Time and space used to be
nearly the same, or at least used to be connected. He suggests that we can call
that era a wetware era (wetwareà oncontroleerbare
(natuurlijke) factoren (zoals wind ed.)) and that era was the ‘the prehistory of time’, and then ‘the history of time’ could start, along with
modernity. Modernity is a history of time.
‘Far’ and ‘long’, just like ‘near’ and ‘soon’, used to mean
nearly the same: just how much, or how little effort would it take for a human
being to span a certain distance – be it by walking, by ploughing or
harvesting. Pg. 171
If people were pressed to explain what they did mean by
‘space’ and ‘time’ – they could have said that ‘space’ is what you can pass in
a given time, while ‘time’ is what you need to pass it. Pg. 171.
History of time began with modernity. Indeed, modernity is,
apart from anything else, history of time:
the time when time has history. Pg. 172
Modernity as History of Time (pg 172)
The separation of time and space
has everything to do with the arrival of fast vehicles, ‘hardware’ so to speak,
with their speed independent of ‘wetware’. This also created the two, space and
time, as philosophical topics. Time wasn’t a feature of distance, but of
vehicles. Time became changeable and controllable. (these days this happens to
space as well, the smaller the i-pod the better). Hence time became a tool. So time was
changeable and territory wasn’t. Time was means to space. You can say modernity started at different
changing human practices, but you might as well say it started when time
started having a history and became a tool.
(…) space and time, once blended in human life labours, have
fallen apart and drifted away from each other in human thought and practice,
(…) Pg. 172
And so something must have happened to the scope and
carrying capacity of human practice, for the sovereignties of space and time to
stare suddenly in the philosophers’ eyes. Pg. 172
That ‘something’ was, as one may guess. The appearance of
vehicles quicker than human or horse legs could ever be; (…) Pg. 172
(…), the time needed to travel ceased to be the feature of
distance; it has become instead the attribute of the means of travelling. Pg.
172
(…) ‘hardware’ humans could invent, build, appropriate, use
and control – not of the inflexible and unstretchable ‘wetware’, (…) Pg. 172
Time was different from space because, unlike space, it could be changed
and manipulated – and most importantly, made shorter, less costly, and so more
productive. Pg. 173
Benjamin Franklin famously announced that ‘time is money’; he could
make that declaration with confidence since he had already defined man as a
‘tol-making animal’. Pg. 173
Time became money once it had become a tool (or was it
rather a weapon?) (…) Pg. 173
Armed with that weapon, one could set oneself the task of
conquering space and in all earnestness set about its implementation. Pg. 173
Whoever travelled faster could claim more territory (…) Pg.
173
The ‘conquest of space’ came to mean faster machines. Pg.
173
In this chase, space was the game and the stake; space was
value, time was the tool. Pg. 173
(…), focused on designing the ways of performing the tasks faster,
while eliminating idle, emty and thus wasted time; (…) Pg 174 (--> according
to Weber)
(…) filling the space with objects more densely (…) Pg. 174
(…), Descartes, looking forward, identified existence with
spatiality, defining whatever exists materially as res extensa (…) Pg. 174
‘I occupy space therefore I exist’ Pg. 174
Modernity: First heavy, Then Light (Pg. 174)
The first part of modernity we can
dub as heavy modernity. And capital was connected to space. The stronger the
quest for territories, the more important became borders and their
safeguarding. So space could be controlled by malleability and shrinkability of
time. Then time had to be coordinated and controlled. And these controlled time
and fortified places, didn’t leave anyone in, but neither they were let out. Light
modernity is the time of software capitalism, where ‘careers’ are unclear,
flexible, adaptive and unsettled, and heavy modernity was the time of career
within solid firms at the same place.
Space, during light modernity,
becomes irrelevant, masked as annihilation of time. By the near-disappearance
of time (instantaneity) with software time, space becomes less valuable. No
space remains to have special value (funny, considering my i-pod remark).
During heavy modernity time was the means to space as the end. And during light
modernity time reaches infinity and there is no end anymore (sort of).
That part of history, now coming to its close, could be
dubbed, for the lack of a better name, the era of hardware, or heavy
modernity: the bulk-obsessed modernity, ‘the larger the better’ kind of
modernity, ‘the size is power, the volume is success’ sort. That was the
hardware era; (…) Pg. 174
To conquer the space was the supreme goal: (…) Pg. 174
Heavy modernity was the era of territorial conquest. Pg. 174
Adventure and happiness, wealth and might were geographical
concepts or ‘landed properties’—tied to the place and immovable. Pg. 175
Wealth and might that depend on the size and quality of hardware
tended to be sluggish, unwieldy and awkward to move. Pg. 175
In heavy modernity, progress meant big size and spatial
expansion. Pg. 175
What held the place whole, compact and subject to homogenous
logic was routinized time (Bell invoked the principal tool of routinization
when calling such time ‘metric’). Pg. 175
When it came, however, to the fortification of the conquered
space, to its colonization, taming and domestication, a tough, uniform and
flexible time was needed: (…) Pg. 175
Space was truly possessed when controlled – and control
meant, first and foremost, time coordination. Pg. 175
(…) also prevented all those inside the place from leaving
at will. Pg. 176
The ‘Fordist factory’, that most coveted and avidly pursued
model of engineered rationality in times of heavy modernity, was the site of
face-to-face meeting, but also a ‘till death us do part’ type of marriage vow,
between capital and labour. Pg. 176
Routinized time tied labour to the ground, while the
massiveness of factory buildings, heaviness of the machinery and, last but not
least, the permanently tied labour, tied the capital. Pg. 176
It all changed, though, with the advent of software
capitalism and light modernity. Pg. 176
‘Whoever begins a career at Microsoft has not the slightest
idea where it will end. Whoever started it at Ford or Renault, could be
well-nigh certain that it will finish in the same place.’ Pg. 176 [with a goldwatch]
I’m not sure whether in both cases the use of the term
‘career’ is legitimate. Pg. 176
Under such conditions the idea of a ‘career’ looks uncannily
like a contradiction in terms. Pg. 177
The change in question is the new irrelevance of space,
masquerading as annihilation of time. Pg. 177
In the software universe, space may be traversed, literally,
in ‘no time’; the difference between ‘far away’ and ‘down here’ is canceled.
Pg. 177
Time no more is the value which ‘must be foregone’, that
‘detour to attainment’, andf thus no more lends value to space. The
near-instantaneity of software time augurs the devaluation of space. Pg. 177
The question mark as moved from the side of the means to
that of the ends. If applied to the time-space relation, this means that since
all parts of space can be reached in the same timespan (that is, in ‘no-time’),
no part of space is privileged, none has ‘special value’. Pg. 177 à to understand, read
around this quote.
The Seductive Lightness of Being (Pg. 178)
No-time hasn’t been reached yet.
But this loss of space as value and annihilation of time has had it’s effect on
the social body. Instantaneity became it’s new objective. It also changed power
relations, since it is people that are adaptive and flexible that rule, ‘People
that come closest to the momentariness of movement’. And the people that are
stuck in one place are ruled. (So are the slow beaten by the fast? Or the
flexible, by the inflexible? Can we speak of a hegemony, when there’s people
who feel they cannot leave a place at all?) You have power if you can control
your speed. (And decide to be slow, like Parkins and Eriksen suggest) Heavy modernity
had embodied labour and during light modernity, labour was disembodied, and
there was no need to control them (see also, I think, Nowotny). Downsizing and
merging is the new trend within management, and it binds the working force and
takes away their position of negotiation. Staying in the game becomes the game,
and the game no longer needs purpose à just like (no) time doesn’t
need space anymore to conquer.
There is no time-distance separating the end from the
beginning; (…) Pg. 178
There are only ‘moments’: points without dimensions. Pg. 178
(vgl Eriksen en Massumi)
Perhaps having killed space as value, time has committed
suicide? Pg. 178
(.,.), it [time reaching zero] is not quite there yet. Pg.
178
More importantly yet, it is the ever-to-be-pursued though
never-to-be-reached ideal of it’s major operators, which in the avatar of a new
norm ppervade and saturate every organ, tissue and cell of the social body. Pg.
178
People whose hands are untied rule over people with tied
hands; freedom of the first is the main cause of the unfreedom of the second
–(…) P.g.178
Nothing has changed in this respect with the passage from
heavy to light modernity. But the eternal frame has filled with a new content;
more precisely, the pursuit of closeness to the source of uncertainty has
narrowed down to, and focused on, one objective: instantaneity. People who come
closest to the momentariness of movement are now the people who rule. Pg. 178
Domination consists in one’s own capacity to escape and the
right to decide one’s speed – while simultaneously stripping the people on the
dominated side of their ability to arrest or constrain one’s own moves or slow
down their velocity. Pg. 179 vgl Parkins en Eriksen
Light modernity let one partner out of the cage. Heavy
modernity was the era of mutual engagement. Pg. 179
Light modernity is the epoch of disengagement, of elusiveness,
facile escape and hopeless chase: it is the most elusive , those free to move
without notice, who rule. Pg. 179
Labour is not commodity (that is, not a commodity like other
commodities), since it cannot be sold or bought separately from it’s
performers. Pg. 179
To control the work process, one had to control the workers.
Pg. 179
We live now, however, through another ‘great transformation’,
(…) Pg. 179
(…) the ‘disembodiment’ of that type of human labour which
serves as the principal source of nourishment, or the grazing ground, of
contemporary capital. Pg. 179
Labour has been let out of panopticon, (…). Pg.179
(…), capital got rid of the task which tied it to the ground
and forced it into direct engagement with the agents of its self-reproduction
and self-aggrandizement. The disembodied labour of the software era allows the
capital to be exterritorial, volatile and fickle. Disembodiment of labour
augurs weightlessness of capital. Pg. 180
The ‘managerial science’ of heavy modernity focused on
keeping the ‘manpower’ in and
forcing it or cajoling to work on
schedule; the art of management of light modernity is concerned with letting
‘humanpower’ out and better still forcing it to go. Brief encounters replace
lasting engagements. Pg. 180
Some observers have hastened to conclude that ‘bigger’ is no
longer considered to be more ‘efficient’. This is not, though, correct. The downsizing
obsession is, as it happens, an undetachable complement of the merger mania.
Pg.180
It is the blend of merger and downsizing strategies that
offers capital and financial power space to move and move quickly, making it
ever more global – while at the same time depriving labour of its bargaining
power, immobilizing it and tying its hands ever more firmly. Pg. 180
Competition for survival, to be sure, is not just the fate
of the workers – or more generally, of those on the receiving side. It penetrates
the slim and fit company of light modernity from the top o the bottom. Pg. 181
Once embarked upon, the ‘slimming’ trend develops its own
momentum. The tendency becomes self-propelling and self-accelerating. Pg. 181
zie ook Eriksen
(…) the original motive – that of increased efficiency –
becomes increasingly irrelevant; fear of losing in the competition game, of
being overtaken, left behind or out of business all together, are quite
sufficient to keep the merging/downsizing game going. This game becomes,
increasingly, its own purpose and its own reward; or, rather, the game no
longer needs purpose when staying in the game is its only award. Pg. 181
Instant Living
It’s all about movement (Massumi).
Always keep all options, choices and possibilities open. The future doesn’t
matter, nor does history, because it’s all about the momentariness of movement.
And this instantaneity links to immortality, which is linked to immediate
consumption, since the moment becomes the immortal experience. Death disappears
because the future doesn’t matter. Now is all there is. Heavy modernity implies ‘long term’ and light
modernity implies ‘short term’. This way instantaneity becomes the ultimate
ideal. Heavy modernity and it’s durable objects are linked to immortality.
Light modernity and transient objects are to be instantly used up and this
devaluates immortality. This fact of people not striving for immortality
anymore is a huge cultural change/turning point.
What Bauman refers to as
‘instantaneity’ is similar to what Nowotny calls the ‘extended present’ and
Eriksen the ‘tyranny of the moment’.
Bauman holds a slightly pessimistic
stance towards these changes. He foresees the consequence of working for the
collectivity, or thinking about tomorrow, losing importance due to individual
instant fulfillment and the forgetting of tomorrow, that might never be. These
are just hypothesis though. But he does say that the collective good will
probably be lost, because of the forgetting of tomorrow, which in the beginning
of the history of man, was the reason why they would act in favor of the
collective good. à side effects of the information age by Eriksen.
Gates, says Sennett, ‘seems free of the obsession to hold on
to things. (…) Rockefeller wanted to own oil rigs, buildings, machinery (…)’
Pg. 181-182
‘postitioning oneself in a network of possibilities rather
than paralyzing oneself in one particular job’. Pg. 182 à it’s all about movement à Massumi
He was cautious not to develop attachment (and particular
any sentimental attachment) or lasting commitment to anything, including his
own creations. Pg. 182
(…) things were dumped as quickly as they were put together
– and were forgotten soon after. Pg 182 à
Tyranny of the Moment, Eriksen
Immortality becomes then the object of immediate
consumption: it is the way you live-through-the-moment that makes the moment
into an ‘immortal experience’. Pg. 182 ZINGEVING!!!!!
Instantaneity (nullifying the resistance of space and
liquefying the materiality of objects) makes every moment infinitely capacious;
and infinite capacity means that there are no limits to what could be squeezed
out of the moment – however brief and ‘fleeting’. Pg. 182
‘Long term’, though
still referred to by habit, is a hollow shell carrying no meaning; Pg 182
‘more time’ can add little to what the moment has already
offered and nothing can be gained from the ‘long term’ considerations. Pg. 182
‘Short
term’ has replaced the ‘long term’ and appointed instantaneity as its ultimate
ideal. Pg. 182
Durable objects are assigned special value and are cherished
and coveted thanks to their association with immortality (…) Pg. 183
Thompson takes it for granted that the wish to ‘make their
own objects durable’ is the constant wish of ‘those people near the top’; (…)
Pg. 183
Such thoughts rang true (or at least credible) amidst the
realities of heavy modernity. I suggest, though, that the advent of light
modernity has radically undermined their credibility. Pg. 183
(…) things similarly transient and similarly meant to be
instantly ‘used up’, (…) Pg.183
Devaluation of immortality cannot but augur a cultural
upheaval; probably the most decisive turning point in human cultural history.
Pg. 183
Demand for this kind of work is nowadays shrinking. The
consequences of falling demand remain to be seen and are difficult to visualize
in advance, since there are no precedents to recall and to lean on. Pg. 183
The novel intantaneity of time also changes radically the
modality of human cohabitation – and most conspicuously the way in which humans
attend (or do not attend) to their collective affairs; or rather the way in
which they make (or do not make) certain affairs into collective ones. Pg. 183
If one makes the necessary allowances for the notorious
disparity between what we do and how we
narrate our actions, one would not reject the claims of ‘public choice’
theorists(as distinct from the universal and extemporal validity of those
claims) offhand. Pg. 184
But history is a process of forgetting as much as it is a
process of learning, and memory is famous for its selectivity. Pg. 184
If this is the case, are the credibility and the allocation
of trust assets, or liabilities? Pg. 184
[Anecdote by Lewin who cites a parable by Jean-Jacques
Rousseau about stag-hunters, who are often tempted, and act upon, small rabbits
that hop by and will feed them while waiting for the stag that would feed the
group. And by doing this even endangering the catch of the stag, because of the
lack of attention. à]
(…) so whoever trusts in the benefits of the joint
enterprise may be bitterly disappointed. Pg. 184
These are also discoveries – new discoveries, perhaps as pregnant with consequences as the
discovery of tomorrow once was. Pg 184-185 àHier
nog wat langer over nadenken. Hij zegt dus eigenlijk dat tijd is ontstaan en nu
bijna weer is verdwenen. Daarom geldt het alleen nog maar het nu/het
moment.
Start: Time and space used to be
nearly the same, or at least used to be connected. He suggests that we can call
that era a wetware era (wetwareà oncontroleerbare
(natuurlijke) factoren (zoals wind ed.)) and that era was the ‘the prehistory of time’, and then ‘the history of time’ could start, along with
modernity. Modernity is a history of time.
Modernity as History of Time (pg 172)
The separation of time and space
has everything to do with the arrival of fast vehicles, ‘hardware’ so to speak,
with their speed independent of ‘wetware’. This also created the two, space and
time, as philosophical topics. Time wasn’t a feature of distance, but of
vehicles. Time became changeable and controllable. (these days this happens to
space as well, the smaller the i-pod the better). Hence time became a tool. So time was
changeable and territory wasn’t. Time was means to space. You can say modernity started at different
changing human practices, but you might as well say it started when time
started having a history and became a tool.
Modernity: First heavy, Then Light (Pg. 174)
The first part of modernity we can
dub as heavy modernity. And capital was connected to space. The stronger the
quest for territories, the more important became borders and their
safeguarding. So space could be controlled by malleability and shrinkability of
time. Then time had to be coordinated and controlled. And these controlled time
and fortified places, didn’t leave anyone in, but neither they were let out.
Light modernity is the time of software capitalism, where ‘careers’ are
unclear, flexible, adaptive and unsettled, and heavy modernity was the time of
career within solid firms at the same place.
Space, during light modernity,
becomes irrelevant, masked as annihilation of time. By the near-disappearance
of time (instantaneity) with software time, space becomes less valuable. No
space remains to have special value (funny, considering my i-pod remark).
During heavy modernity time was the means to space as the end. And during light
modernity time reaches infinity and there is no end anymore (sort of).
The Seductive Lightness of Being (Pg. 178)
No-time hasn’t been reached yet.
But this loss of space as value and annihilation of time has had it’s effect on
the social body. Instantaneity became it’s new objective. It also changed power
relations, since it is people that are adaptive and flexible that rule, ‘People
that come closest to the momentariness of movement’. And the people that are
stuck in one place are ruled. (So are the slow beaten by the fast? Or the
flexible, by the inflexible? Can we speak of a hegemony, when there’s people
who feel they cannot leave a place at all?) You have power if you can control
your speed. (And decide to be slow, like Parkins and Eriksen suggest) Heavy
modernity had embodied labour and during light modernity, labour was
disembodied, and there was no need to control them (see also, I think,
Nowotny). Downsizing and merging is the new trend within management, and it
binds the working force and takes away their position of negotiation. Staying
in the game becomes the game, and the game no longer needs purpose à just like (no) time doesn’t need space anymore to conquer.
Instant Living
It’s all about movement (Massumi).
Always keep all options, choices and possibilities open. The future doesn’t
matter, nor does history, because it’s all about the momentariness of movement.
And this instantaneity links to immortality, which is linked to immediate
consumption, since the moment becomes the immortal experience. Death disappears
because the future doesn’t matter. Now is all there is. Heavy modernity implies ‘long term’ and light
modernity implies ‘short term’. This way instantaneity becomes the ultimate
ideal. Heavy modernity and it’s durable objects are linked to immortality.
Light modernity and transient objects are to be instantly used up and this
devaluates immortality. This fact of people not striving for immortality
anymore is a huge cultural change/turning point.
What Bauman refers to as
‘instantaneity’ is similar to what Nowotny calls the ‘extended present’ and
Eriksen the ‘tyranny of the moment’.
Bauman holds a slightly pessimistic
stance towards these changes. He foresees the consequence of working for the
collectivity, or thinking about tomorrow, losing importance due to individual
instant fulfillment and the forgetting of tomorrow, that might never be. These
are just hypothesis though. But he does say that the collective good will
probably be lost, because of the forgetting of tomorrow, which in the beginning
of the history of man, was the reason why they would act in favor of the
collective good. à side effects of the information age by Eriksen.
Larks, Owls and Hummingbirds (via NYTimes)
Teenagers are notoriously difficult to rouse in the mornings. For the sake of parental authority it may be best that we keep this an adult secret, but . . . it may not be the youngsters’ fault.
In many cases, it is not laziness, but a part of normal development and determined by the genes. Human circadian clocks are often geared to “owl-like” behavior during adolescence. Fortunately, boys tend to grow out of this by about age 20 and girls a year earlier. But there is a good case for schools opening later and experimenting with the timing of the curriculum and of examinations, so that there is a better match between organizational requirements and the capabilities of the students.
Lark by Daniel Pettersson, Creative Commons (some rights reserved); Spotted Owl by Don Ryan/The New York Times; hummingbird by Yuri Cortez/The New York Times Which one are you?
The teenagers are doing what teenagers do because, left to our natural devices, we would eat, sleep and drink (along with many more biological functions) not when we decide to, but when our biological clock tells us to. Only cultural norms and the alarm clock give us the pretense of choice by overriding our inner rhythms — and there is increasing evidence that we are paying a high cost in terms of our health. Disruption of the circadian clock is linked with cancer, cardiovascular diseases, gastric illnesses, asthma, schizophrenia, learning disorders and other conditions.
Charles Czeisler of Harvard University established a decade ago that the mean for the intrinsic, or “free-running,” activity rhythm is 24 hours 11 minutes, plus or minus 16 minutes. It is not 24 hours 11 minutes for everyone, of course, as there is considerable variation among individuals and over the course of one’s life.
Czeisler’s arduous study involved a month’s intensive monitoring of 29 adults. The participants were denied time cues (food, for instance, was made available more or less constantly), kept in a semi-recumbent posture and in a “forced” 28-hour sleep-wake cycle. This complex and carefully controlled regime was necessary to disassociate the intrinsic rhythm from the normal light signals that synchronize the rhythm to the solar cycle.
Our circadian rhythm is synchronized with the 24-hour solar cycle by light signals received by non-rod, non-cone receptors found exclusively in our eyes. While the 70-80 percent of us who are dubbed hummingbirds manage this well, the “larks,” who tend to be up early, and late-rising “owls,” who turn in usually well after midnight, have difficulty resetting their internal clocks.
Larks tend to be older; college students and twenty-somethings are well-known owls. Larks are most aware around noon, work best in the late morning and are chatty, friendly and pleasant from about 9:00 a.m to around 4:00 p.m. Owls, on the other hand, do not really get going until the afternoon, are at their most pleasant (if that is not an oxymoronic term for college students) later in the day and are at their most alert after 6:00 p.m.
It might be envy on my part, but those early-rising larks I have known have often seemed to my bleary early-morning eye to adopt a smug moral superiority based on Benjamin Franklin’s maxim, “Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.” But there is no basis for Franklin’s claim. Catharine Gale and Christopher Martyn of Southampton University followed up a 1973 survey that had included data on sleeping habits. More than 20 years later they found no evidence among the survivors that following Franklin’s advice was associated with any health, socioeconomic or cognitive advantage.
If anything, owls were wealthier than larks, though there was no difference in their health or wisdom. Gale and Martyn wryly offer the thought that “it seems that owls need not worry that their way of life carries adverse consequences. However, those who cite Franklin’s maxim to encourage their children to go to bed early may wish to consider whether their practice is entirely ethical.”
This evening/morningness is less a matter of choice than of genetics. Being bright-eyed and raring to go first thing in the morning is not just a case of how much sleep someone has had, nor is it a reflection of willpower. Genes may largely determine it.
While at the University of Utah, Louis Ptácek and colleagues studied three families with familial advanced sleep-phase syndrome (FASPS), an extreme form of lark behavior. One family included a grandmother, daughter and grandchild, all with the same sleep disturbance. The family members with the disorder have an aberrant wake/sleep cycle. Regardless of work schedules or social pressures, they cannot stay up much later than 7:30 p.m. and they tend to wake up around 3:30 a.m. In other words, the disorder shifts the normal wake and sleep pattern forward by three to four hours.
By studying the family relationships, Ptácek found that the disorder is inherited, and he has found the genes involved. The genetic implications prompted two senior researchers to comment, “It seems that our parents — through their DNA — continue to influence our bedtimes.”
Apart from its importance in helping to understand the relationship between the circadian clock and the sleep process, the work on FASPS was the first time that scientists have uncovered a genetic mutation leading to a change in a complex human behavior like sleep.
The traditional classification of people into larks, owls and hummingbirds may be too simplistic. A study of a large sample of the workforce at a Volkswagen car plant suggests that people fall into a spectrum of chronotypes between the extremes, depending on a range of factors, notably their genetic makeup and the amount of light they are exposed to during the day. This last may be much less than many people think. In brightly lit offices, the light levels are some 200-300 times less than they are outside on a sunny day. Even a cloudy day is some 20-30 times brighter.
Bright light has a powerful effect in shifting the phase of our body clock, and if we don’t see much bright light — and many office workers do not — then our circadian health suffers. One idea is that commuter buses and trains should have glass roofs, so that at least some of the workforce will get a daily dose of outdoor light.
Till Roenneberg, a professor at Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich, has developed a robust questionnaire that determines an individual’s proclivity to “morningness” and “eveningness.” He has coined the phrase “social jet lag” to describe the persistent mismatch between people’s biological clocks and the demands of their jobs or education.
It is bad enough for the larks and owls whose genes cause a mismatch between modern life and the ancient human body clock. For hummingbirds working night shifts or burning the proverbial candle at both ends, the implications are far-ranging concerning learning, memory, vigilance, performance and quality of life.
Society pays far too little attention to circadian disorders. Roenneberg’s call to employers to say to their workforce, “Please wake up in your own time and come in when you are ready,” is provocative but a challenge that we have not been facing up to.
Humans have broken many links with the natural world. Our food comes pre-packed, our drink pre-bottled and we take pills instead of chewing leaves. Electricity turns our nights into days, and central heating our winters into spring. But if we go deep into a dark cave without a watch, after a few days we revert to ancient patterns. Deprived of time cues, our rhythms slowly drift out of alignment with the outside world.
Over 20 percent of the working population now work at least some of the time outside the normal 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. working day, and the trend is increasing. Living outside the “natural” circadian pattern has undoubted health risks.
But we have choices. We can use what we know about the molecular mechanisms of circadian rhythms to mitigate the biological harm of our “24/7” world. We could better manage the effects of this world by re-organizing work patterns and schedules. We could match chronotype to suitable schedules. We could try to create a world in which we can offer a time paradise or “Uchronia” for a time-stressed populace.
Or is it too late, and we have become trapped in the materialistic time hell of “Dyschronia”?
**********
NOTES:
For more on determining the human circadian rhythm as 24 hours 11 minutes plus or minus 16 minutes see Charles A. Czeisler, Jeanne F. Duffy, Theresa L. Shanahan, Emery N. Brown, Jude F. Mitchell, David W. Rimmer, Joseph M. Ronda, Edward J. Silva, James S. Allan, Jonathan S. Emens, Derk-Jan Dijk, Richard E. Kronauer. “Stability, Precision, and Near 24-Hour Period of the Human Circadian Pacemaker,” Science, June 25, 1999, Volume 284, pp. 2177-2181.
On the link between multiple sclerosis and vitamin D see Ramagopalan SV, Maugeri NJ, Handunnetthi L, Lincoln MR, Orton S-M, et al. (2009) Expression of the Multiple Sclerosis-Associated MHC Class II Allele HLA-DRB1*1501 Is Regulated by Vitamin D. PLoS Genet 5(2): e1000369.
Michael Smolensky and Lynne Lamberg applied the term hummingbird in “The Body Clock Guide to Better Health,” Owl Books 2000
Benjamin Franklin’s motto was tested in Gale, C. & Martyn, C. (1998) “Larks and owls and health, wealth, and wisdom.” Br Med J, 317, 1675–77.
Our parents determining our bedtime, see Singer, C. M. & Lewy, A. J. 1999 “Does our DNA determine when we sleep?” Nat Med, 5, 983.
A discussion of the importance of chronotypes is T. Roenneberg, A. Wirz-Justice, M. Merrow “Life between Clocks: Daily Temporal Patterns of Human Chronotypes Journal of Biological Rhythms,” Vol. 18, No. 1, 80-90 (2003)
A description of the molecular basis of larks and owls is at Steven A. Brown, Dieter Kunz, Amelie Dumas, Pål O. Westermark, Katja Vanselow, Amely Tilmann-Wahnschaffe, Hanspeter Herzel, and Achim Kramer “Molecular insights into human daily behavior” Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2008 February 5; 105(5): 1602–1607.
Tags: sleep
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
What’s
Your Chronotype? Understanding the “Lark” and “Owl” Circadian Sleep Patterns
A New
York Times column examines the factors that contribute
to your preferred sleep schedule.
This is also called your “chronotype.” It turns out that your DNA has a strong influence on when you like to sleep.
Some people have a circadian clock that makes them “evening types.” These “owls” have a natural tendency to stay up late at night and sleep late in the morning. Children tend to become night owls as teens because of a shift in the timing of their circadian clocks.
Some night owls have delayed sleep phase disorder. This involves a struggle to conform to work or social demands. It can be difficult for them to function well during the day.
Other people are natural “morning types.” These “larks” prefer to go to bed early and wake up early. Adults often become larks as they get older.
Some larks have advanced sleep phase disorder. They fall asleep several hours before a normal bedtime. As a result, they also wake up hours earlier than most people wake in the morning.
So do larks have an advantage over owls? After all, it was Benjamin Franklin who said, “Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.”
A study in 1998 put these words to the test. It found no evidence that larks were healthier, wealthier or wiser than owls.
Not everyone fits neatly into the categories of morning or evening types. Many people are somewhere in between the larks and the owls.
And many factors such as genetics and light exposure affect when you are sleepy and alert. A new study in the journal Sleep examined some other factors.
It involved 5,720 college students at two universities in Spain and Italy. Results show that females went to bed earlier and slept longer than males.
Nationality also had a significant effect on sleep patterns. On average the Spaniards went to bed and woke up later than the Italians.
The study even found a significant but small “season of birth” effect. Subjects born in spring and summer went to bed later than those who were born in fall and winter. A study in 1999 reported similar findings.
ARTIKELS ONLINE
ook te vinden op:
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/21/guest-column-larks-owls-and-hummingbirds/
Larks, Owls and Hummingbirds (via NYTimes)
Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009 | No
Comments
By Leon KreitzmanTeenagers are notoriously difficult to rouse in the mornings. For the sake of parental authority it may be best that we keep this an adult secret, but . . . it may not be the youngsters’ fault.
In many cases, it is not laziness, but a part of normal development and determined by the genes. Human circadian clocks are often geared to “owl-like” behavior during adolescence. Fortunately, boys tend to grow out of this by about age 20 and girls a year earlier. But there is a good case for schools opening later and experimenting with the timing of the curriculum and of examinations, so that there is a better match between organizational requirements and the capabilities of the students.
Lark by Daniel Pettersson, Creative Commons (some rights reserved); Spotted Owl by Don Ryan/The New York Times; hummingbird by Yuri Cortez/The New York Times Which one are you?
The teenagers are doing what teenagers do because, left to our natural devices, we would eat, sleep and drink (along with many more biological functions) not when we decide to, but when our biological clock tells us to. Only cultural norms and the alarm clock give us the pretense of choice by overriding our inner rhythms — and there is increasing evidence that we are paying a high cost in terms of our health. Disruption of the circadian clock is linked with cancer, cardiovascular diseases, gastric illnesses, asthma, schizophrenia, learning disorders and other conditions.
Charles Czeisler of Harvard University established a decade ago that the mean for the intrinsic, or “free-running,” activity rhythm is 24 hours 11 minutes, plus or minus 16 minutes. It is not 24 hours 11 minutes for everyone, of course, as there is considerable variation among individuals and over the course of one’s life.
Czeisler’s arduous study involved a month’s intensive monitoring of 29 adults. The participants were denied time cues (food, for instance, was made available more or less constantly), kept in a semi-recumbent posture and in a “forced” 28-hour sleep-wake cycle. This complex and carefully controlled regime was necessary to disassociate the intrinsic rhythm from the normal light signals that synchronize the rhythm to the solar cycle.
Our circadian rhythm is synchronized with the 24-hour solar cycle by light signals received by non-rod, non-cone receptors found exclusively in our eyes. While the 70-80 percent of us who are dubbed hummingbirds manage this well, the “larks,” who tend to be up early, and late-rising “owls,” who turn in usually well after midnight, have difficulty resetting their internal clocks.
Larks tend to be older; college students and twenty-somethings are well-known owls. Larks are most aware around noon, work best in the late morning and are chatty, friendly and pleasant from about 9:00 a.m to around 4:00 p.m. Owls, on the other hand, do not really get going until the afternoon, are at their most pleasant (if that is not an oxymoronic term for college students) later in the day and are at their most alert after 6:00 p.m.
It might be envy on my part, but those early-rising larks I have known have often seemed to my bleary early-morning eye to adopt a smug moral superiority based on Benjamin Franklin’s maxim, “Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.” But there is no basis for Franklin’s claim. Catharine Gale and Christopher Martyn of Southampton University followed up a 1973 survey that had included data on sleeping habits. More than 20 years later they found no evidence among the survivors that following Franklin’s advice was associated with any health, socioeconomic or cognitive advantage.
If anything, owls were wealthier than larks, though there was no difference in their health or wisdom. Gale and Martyn wryly offer the thought that “it seems that owls need not worry that their way of life carries adverse consequences. However, those who cite Franklin’s maxim to encourage their children to go to bed early may wish to consider whether their practice is entirely ethical.”
This evening/morningness is less a matter of choice than of genetics. Being bright-eyed and raring to go first thing in the morning is not just a case of how much sleep someone has had, nor is it a reflection of willpower. Genes may largely determine it.
While at the University of Utah, Louis Ptácek and colleagues studied three families with familial advanced sleep-phase syndrome (FASPS), an extreme form of lark behavior. One family included a grandmother, daughter and grandchild, all with the same sleep disturbance. The family members with the disorder have an aberrant wake/sleep cycle. Regardless of work schedules or social pressures, they cannot stay up much later than 7:30 p.m. and they tend to wake up around 3:30 a.m. In other words, the disorder shifts the normal wake and sleep pattern forward by three to four hours.
By studying the family relationships, Ptácek found that the disorder is inherited, and he has found the genes involved. The genetic implications prompted two senior researchers to comment, “It seems that our parents — through their DNA — continue to influence our bedtimes.”
Apart from its importance in helping to understand the relationship between the circadian clock and the sleep process, the work on FASPS was the first time that scientists have uncovered a genetic mutation leading to a change in a complex human behavior like sleep.
The traditional classification of people into larks, owls and hummingbirds may be too simplistic. A study of a large sample of the workforce at a Volkswagen car plant suggests that people fall into a spectrum of chronotypes between the extremes, depending on a range of factors, notably their genetic makeup and the amount of light they are exposed to during the day. This last may be much less than many people think. In brightly lit offices, the light levels are some 200-300 times less than they are outside on a sunny day. Even a cloudy day is some 20-30 times brighter.
Bright light has a powerful effect in shifting the phase of our body clock, and if we don’t see much bright light — and many office workers do not — then our circadian health suffers. One idea is that commuter buses and trains should have glass roofs, so that at least some of the workforce will get a daily dose of outdoor light.
Till Roenneberg, a professor at Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich, has developed a robust questionnaire that determines an individual’s proclivity to “morningness” and “eveningness.” He has coined the phrase “social jet lag” to describe the persistent mismatch between people’s biological clocks and the demands of their jobs or education.
It is bad enough for the larks and owls whose genes cause a mismatch between modern life and the ancient human body clock. For hummingbirds working night shifts or burning the proverbial candle at both ends, the implications are far-ranging concerning learning, memory, vigilance, performance and quality of life.
Society pays far too little attention to circadian disorders. Roenneberg’s call to employers to say to their workforce, “Please wake up in your own time and come in when you are ready,” is provocative but a challenge that we have not been facing up to.
Humans have broken many links with the natural world. Our food comes pre-packed, our drink pre-bottled and we take pills instead of chewing leaves. Electricity turns our nights into days, and central heating our winters into spring. But if we go deep into a dark cave without a watch, after a few days we revert to ancient patterns. Deprived of time cues, our rhythms slowly drift out of alignment with the outside world.
Over 20 percent of the working population now work at least some of the time outside the normal 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. working day, and the trend is increasing. Living outside the “natural” circadian pattern has undoubted health risks.
But we have choices. We can use what we know about the molecular mechanisms of circadian rhythms to mitigate the biological harm of our “24/7” world. We could better manage the effects of this world by re-organizing work patterns and schedules. We could match chronotype to suitable schedules. We could try to create a world in which we can offer a time paradise or “Uchronia” for a time-stressed populace.
Or is it too late, and we have become trapped in the materialistic time hell of “Dyschronia”?
**********
NOTES:
For more on determining the human circadian rhythm as 24 hours 11 minutes plus or minus 16 minutes see Charles A. Czeisler, Jeanne F. Duffy, Theresa L. Shanahan, Emery N. Brown, Jude F. Mitchell, David W. Rimmer, Joseph M. Ronda, Edward J. Silva, James S. Allan, Jonathan S. Emens, Derk-Jan Dijk, Richard E. Kronauer. “Stability, Precision, and Near 24-Hour Period of the Human Circadian Pacemaker,” Science, June 25, 1999, Volume 284, pp. 2177-2181.
On the link between multiple sclerosis and vitamin D see Ramagopalan SV, Maugeri NJ, Handunnetthi L, Lincoln MR, Orton S-M, et al. (2009) Expression of the Multiple Sclerosis-Associated MHC Class II Allele HLA-DRB1*1501 Is Regulated by Vitamin D. PLoS Genet 5(2): e1000369.
Michael Smolensky and Lynne Lamberg applied the term hummingbird in “The Body Clock Guide to Better Health,” Owl Books 2000
Benjamin Franklin’s motto was tested in Gale, C. & Martyn, C. (1998) “Larks and owls and health, wealth, and wisdom.” Br Med J, 317, 1675–77.
Our parents determining our bedtime, see Singer, C. M. & Lewy, A. J. 1999 “Does our DNA determine when we sleep?” Nat Med, 5, 983.
A discussion of the importance of chronotypes is T. Roenneberg, A. Wirz-Justice, M. Merrow “Life between Clocks: Daily Temporal Patterns of Human Chronotypes Journal of Biological Rhythms,” Vol. 18, No. 1, 80-90 (2003)
A description of the molecular basis of larks and owls is at Steven A. Brown, Dieter Kunz, Amelie Dumas, Pål O. Westermark, Katja Vanselow, Amely Tilmann-Wahnschaffe, Hanspeter Herzel, and Achim Kramer “Molecular insights into human daily behavior” Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2008 February 5; 105(5): 1602–1607.
Tags: sleep
“Understanding Body Time in the 24-Hour City” by Gay Gaer
Luce in New York Magazine 15 Nov. 1971
“the good news about depression” by Laurence Cherry in New
York Magazine 2 Juni 1986
“In quest of sleep” by Alice K. Schwartz and Norma S. Aaron in
New York Magazine 19 Febr. 1979
less
than 1 mile away in
New York, NY
4 Night Crawlers
We don't have a Meetup scheduled.
DSPS. Insomnia. Shift
work sleep disorder. For whatever reason, midnight on a Tuesday sounds like a
great time for a meetup. This group was created primarily with a focus on
Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome, but is open for the discussion of other sleep and
circadian rhythm disorders, particularly ones which make "normal"
life in a nine-to-five society difficult or impossible. Other topics of
interest would include alternative sleep cycle patterns (i.e. polyphasic
sleep), sleep-related social issue …
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
What’s
Your Chronotype? Understanding the “Lark” and “Owl” Circadian Sleep Patterns
A New
York Times column examines the factors that contribute
to your preferred sleep schedule. This is also called your “chronotype.” It turns out that your DNA has a strong influence on when you like to sleep.
Some people have a circadian clock that makes them “evening types.” These “owls” have a natural tendency to stay up late at night and sleep late in the morning. Children tend to become night owls as teens because of a shift in the timing of their circadian clocks.
Some night owls have delayed sleep phase disorder. This involves a struggle to conform to work or social demands. It can be difficult for them to function well during the day.
Other people are natural “morning types.” These “larks” prefer to go to bed early and wake up early. Adults often become larks as they get older.
Some larks have advanced sleep phase disorder. They fall asleep several hours before a normal bedtime. As a result, they also wake up hours earlier than most people wake in the morning.
So do larks have an advantage over owls? After all, it was Benjamin Franklin who said, “Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.”
A study in 1998 put these words to the test. It found no evidence that larks were healthier, wealthier or wiser than owls.
Not everyone fits neatly into the categories of morning or evening types. Many people are somewhere in between the larks and the owls.
And many factors such as genetics and light exposure affect when you are sleepy and alert. A new study in the journal Sleep examined some other factors.
It involved 5,720 college students at two universities in Spain and Italy. Results show that females went to bed earlier and slept longer than males.
Nationality also had a significant effect on sleep patterns. On average the Spaniards went to bed and woke up later than the Italians.
The study even found a significant but small “season of birth” effect. Subjects born in spring and summer went to bed later than those who were born in fall and winter. A study in 1999 reported similar findings.
