Sleep has long been considered essential for health, cognition, and emotional well-being. But what if science could end it? Advances in neuropharmacology, brain stimulation, and synthetic biology hint at future technologies that reduce or eliminate the need for sleep, giving us more waking hours to work, play, and live.

While increased productivity is tempting, sleep deprivation has deep biological consequences. Could a sleep-free society cope with the psychological, social, and evolutionary impacts? Would we lose creativity or emotional resilience?

The end of sleep would transform human life, but it may come with costs we don’t yet understand.