“Cue Thomas Edison, whose invention of the light bulb revolutionized and regularized sleeping schedules, eliminating segmented sleeping: The longer a house had lighting, the later a household would go to bed. Electricity had elbowed out night-waking, along with its valuable qualities. “By turning night into day,” wrote Ekirch, “modern technology has obstructed our oldest avenue to the human psyche, making us, to invoke the words of the 17th-century English playwright Thomas Middleton, ‘disannulled of our first sleep, and cheated of our dreams and fantasies.’” Wehr agreed, suggesting that current routines have not only changed our sleeping patterns, but also “might provide a physiological explanation for the observation that modern humans seem to have lost touch with the wellspring of myths and fantasies.” utne reader