Abstract :
LONG GONE are the days (or rather nights) when sleep was just "a balm of hurt minds, great nature???s second course" (pace Shakespeare). It is now a big business, an industry in its own right. In his latest book \´Night School\´, Professor Richard Wiseman even writes about "the new science of sleep and dreaming". As for the seemingly oxymoronic terms \´sleep technology\´ and \´sleep engineering\´, they have become almost routine.