In 1996, in an episode called “Messages from Earth,” part of the beloved sci-fi TV series Babylon 5, Captain John Sheridan (Bruce Boxleitner) confesses to his Minbari colleague Delenn (the late, great Mira Furlan) that he always got a good night’s sleep thanks to the sound of rain. As he and Delenn try to get a rest before a space battle, she deftly has the alien computer of the starship White Star play rain sounds for Sheridan, because, wow, in the future, wise aliens have figured out the science of simulated sounds as a sleep aid.
Thirty years later, this sweet and humanistic scene is hilariously anachronistic, but telling.
Of course, from cassettes to vinyl records to CDs, the idea of recorded noises that aid in relaxation was nothing new in 1996. But what Babylon 5 did predict was the seamless ease of firing up a calming soundscape without leaving one’s bed. Today, this technology exists in various guises, like in the Calm app, a place where rain sounds for stressed-out folks is just the tip of the soundscape iceberg. But the real question is: as we head into a future of sleep being constantly aided by sonic inputs, why are we doing this at all? Why are we obsessed with finding things that we’re not really listening to?
