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people should only go to sleep if they are tired, caffeine and exercising before bed disturbs sleep, and alcohol does not help people fall asleep, but rather disrupts sleep and decreases its quality

Dr Sandberg believes we could be living on hard drives along with our digital possessions in the not too distant future, which would allow us to shed the trouble of owning a body. The concept is called "mind uploading", and it suggests that when our bodies age and begin to fail like a worn or snapped record, we may be able to continue living consciously inside a computer as our own virtual substitutes. "It's the idea that we can copy or transfer the information inside the brain into a form that can be run on the computer," said Dr Sandberg. He added: "That would mean that your consciousness or a combination of that would continue in the computer." Dr Sandberg says although it's just a theory now, researchers and engineers are working on super computers that could one day handle a map of all the networks of neurons and synapses in our brains - and that map could produce human consciousness outside of the body.

Mr Sutton is the founder of CultofLess.com, a website which has helped him sell or give away his possessions - apart from his laptop, an iPad, an Amazon Kindle, two external hard drives, a "few" articles of clothing and bed sheets for a mattress that was left in his newly rented apartment. This 21st-Century minimalist says he got rid of much of his clutter because he felt the ever-increasing number of available digital goods have provided adequate replacements for his former physical possessions

The tech-savvy Los Angeles "transplant" credits his external hard drives and online services like iTunes, Hulu, Flickr, Facebook, Skype and Google Maps for allowing him to lead a minimalist life.

- the internet has replaced my need for an address

wasting my time

"I want to speak to you not through the wearisome Machine."

The Machine is much, but it is not everything. I see something like you in this plate, but I do not see you. I hear something like you through this telephone, but I do not hear you

the Machine did not transmit nuances of expression. It only gave a general idea of people - an idea that was good enough for all practical purposes, Vashti thought. The imponderable bloom, declared by a discredited philosophy to be the actual essence of intercourse, was rightly ignored by the Machine, just as the imponderable bloom of the grape was ignored by the manufacturers of artificial fruit.

"It is contrary to the spirit of the age," she asserted. "Do you mean by that, contrary to the Machine?"

The surface of the earth is only dust and mud, no advantage. The surface of the earth is only dust and mud, no life remains on it, and you would need a respirator, or the cold of the outer air would kill you. One dies immediately in the outer air

For a moment Vashti felt lonely. Then she generated the light, and the sight of her room, flooded with radiance and studded with electric buttons, revived her. There were buttons and switches everywhere - buttons to call for food for music, for clothing. There was the hot-bath button, by pressure of which a basin of (imitation) marble rose out of the floor, filled to the brim with a warm deodorized liquid. There was the cold-bath button. There was the button that produced literature. and there were of course the buttons by which she communicated with her friends. The room, though it contained nothing, was in touch with all that she cared for in the world.

To most of these questions she replied with irritation - a growing quality in that accelerated age

Her lecture, which lasted ten minutes

Vashti was seized with the terrors of direct experience

I will not tell you through the Machine

thanks to the advance of science, the earth was exactly alike all over. Rapid intercourse, from which the previous civilization had hoped so much, had ended by defeating itself. What was the good of going to Peking when it was just like Shrewsbury? Why return to Shrewsbury when it would all be like Peking? Men seldom moved their bodies; all unrest was concentrated in the soul.

her horror of direct experience returned. It was not quite like the air-ship in the cinematophote. For one thing it smelt - not strongly or unpleasantly, but it did smell, and with her eyes shut she should have known that a new thing was close to her.

The man in front dropped his Book - no great matter, but it disquieted them all

they seemed intolerable

When the air-ships had been built, the desire to look direct at things still lingered in the world. Hence the extraordinary number of skylights and windows, and the proportionate discomfort to those who were civilized and refined

illegal, unmechanical, and punishable by Homelessness

People never touched one another. The custom had become obsolete, owing to the Machine

"Cover the window, please. These mountains give me no ideas."

She might well declare that the visit was superfluous. The buttons, the knobs, the reading-desk with the Book, the temperature, the atmosphere, the illumination - all were exactly the same. And if Kuno himself, flesh of her flesh, stood close beside her at last, what profit was there in that? She was too well-bred to shake him by the hand.

"You think it irreligious of me to have found out a way of my own. It was just what the Committee thought, when they threatened me with Homelessness." At this she grew angry. "I worship nothing!" she cried. "I am most advanced. I don"t think you irreligious, for there is no such thing as religion left. All the fear and the superstition that existed once have been destroyed by the Machine. I only meant that to find out a way of your own was----Besides, there is no new way out." "So it is always supposed." "Except through the vomitories, for which one must have an Egression-permit, it is impossible to get out. The Book says so." "Well, the Book"s wrong, for I have been out on my feet."

Each infant was examined at birth, and all who promised undue strength were destroyed. Humanitarians may protest, but it would have been no true kindness to let an athlete live; he would never have been happy in that state of life to which the Machine had called him

Man is the measure. That was my first lesson. Man"s feet are the measure for distance, his hands are the measure for ownership, his body is the measure for all that is lovable and desirable and strong

all the food-tubes and medicine-tubes and music- tubes that the Machine has evolved lately

Kuno had lately asked to be a father, and his request had been refused by the Committee. His was not a type that the Machine desired to hand on

I felt, for the first time, that a protest had been lodged against corruption, and that even as the dead were comforting me, so I was comforting the unborn. I felt that humanity existed, and that it existed without clothes. How can I possibly explain this? It was naked, humanity seemed naked, and all these tubes and buttons and machineries neither came into the world with us, nor will they follow us out, nor do they matter supremely while we are here

There was not room for such a person in the world. And with her pity disgust mingled. She was ashamed at having borne such a son, she who had always been so respectable and so full of ideas

Cannot you see, cannot all you lecturers see, that it is we that are dying, and that down here the only thing that really lives in the Machine? We created the Machine, to do our will, but we cannot make it do our will now

I fought till the very end

Beware of first- hand ideas!" exclaimed one of the most advanced of them. "First-hand ideas do not really exist. They are but the physical impressions produced by live and fear, and on this gross foundation who could erect a philosophy? Let your ideas be second-hand, and if possible tenth-hand, for then they will be far removed from that disturbing element - direct observation

in theory the Machine was still the creation and the implement of man. but in practice all, save a few retrogrades, worshipped it as divine

No one confessed the Machine was out of hand. Year by year it was served with increased efficiency and decreased intelligence

Time passed, and they resented the defects no longer. The defects had not been remedied, but the human tissues in that latter day had become so subservient, that they readily adapted themselves to every caprice of the Machine

mankind was not yet sufficiently adaptable to do without sleeping

Under the seas, beneath the roots of the mountains, ran the wires through which they saw and heard, the enormous eyes and ears that were their heritage, and the hum of many workings clothed their thoughts in one garment of subserviency. Only the old and the sick remained ungrateful, for it was rumoured that Euthanasia, too, was out of order, and that pain had reappeared among men

there came a day when, without the slightest warning, without any previous hint of feebleness, the entire communication-system broke down, all over the world, and the world, as they understood it, ended

She had never known silence, and the coming of it nearly killed her - it did kill many thousands of people outright

man who had once made god in his image, and had mirrored his strength on the constellations, beautiful naked man was dying, strangled in the garments that he had woven

some fool will start the Machine again, tomorrow

scraps of the untainted sky

Not only do smartphones affect our memory and our concentration, research shows they are addictive – to the point where they could be a ‘gateway drug’ making users more vulnerable to other addictions.

Smartphones are also linked to reduced social interaction, inadequate sleep, poor real-world navigation, and depression.

“The more time that kids spend on digital devices, the less empathetic they are, and the less they are able to process and recognise facial expressions, so their ability to actually communicate with each other is decreased.”

“Casino-funded research is designed to keep people gambling, and app software developers use exactly the same techniques. They have lots of buzzes and icons so you attend to them, they have things that move and flash so you notice them and keep your attention on the device.”

Around 90 per cent of US university students are thought to experience ‘phantom vibrations', so the researcher took a group to a desert location with no cell reception – and found that even after four days, around half of the students still thought their pocket was buzzing with Facebook or text notifications.

“Collaboration is a buzzword with software companies who are targeting schools to get kids to use these collaboration tools on their iPads – but collaboration decreases when you're using these devices,”

“All addiction is based on the same craving for a dopamine response, whether it's drug, gambling, alcohol or phone addiction,” he says. “As the dopamine response drops off, you need to increase the amount you need to get the same result, you want a little bit more next time. Neurologically, they all look the same.“We know – there are lots of studies on this – that once we form an addiction to something, we become more vulnerable to other addictions. That’s why there’s concerns around heavy users of more benign, easily-accessed drugs like alcohol and marijuana as there’s some correlation with usage of more physically addictive drugs like heroin, and neurological responses are the same.”

parents can also fall victim to screens which distract from their child’s activities or conversations, and most adults will experience this with friends and family members too.

“We also know that if you learn something on an iPad you are less likely to be able to transfer that to another device or to the real world,”

a series of studies have tested this with children who learn to construct a project with ‘digital’ blocks and then try the project with real blocks. “They can’t do it - they start from zero again,”

“Our brains can’t actually multitask, we have to switch our attention from one thing to another, and each time you switch, there's a cost to your attentional resources. After a few hours of this, we become very stressed.” That also causes us to forget things

A study from Norway recently tested how well kids remembered what they learned on screens. One group of students received information on a screen and were asked to memorise it; the second group received the same information on paper. Both groups were tested on their recall.Unsurprisingly, the children who received the paper version remembered more of the material. But the children with the electronic version were also found to be more stressed,

The famous ‘London taxi driver experiments’ found that memorising large maps caused the hippocampus to expand in size. Williams says that the reverse is going to happen if we don’t use our brain and memory to navigate. “Our brains are just like our muscles. We ‘use it or lose it’ – in other words, if we use navigation devices for directions rather than our brains, we will lose that ability.”

numerous studies also link smartphone use with sleeplessness and anxiety. “Some other interesting research has shown that the more friends you have on social media, the less friends you are likely to have in real life, the less actual contacts you have and the greater likelihood you have of depression,”

12-month-old children whose carers regularly use smartphones have poorer facial expression perception

turning off software alarms and notifications, putting strict time limits around screen use, keeping screens out of bedrooms, minimising social media and replacing screens with paper books, paper maps and other non-screen activities can all help minimise harm from digital devices including smartphones