I barely
slept, the second night in Chunking Mansions. The loud neighbors, the hot Hong
Kong air, the landlord banging on the door after midnight. None of these things
are particularly conducive to a peaceful rest, and for once in my life I
actually looked forward to attempts at shut eye on the 15+ hour flight home in
the morning.
For all the
dread of returning to the notorious Hong Kong hostiles that evening, after a
day of exploring the area, I was actually looking forward to the strapping this
weird thing to my head — closing my eyes and embracing the luxury of forgetting
where I was for a few precious minutes.
I’d tried
Silentmode’s PowerMask earlier in the day, in the middle of the Brinc
accelerator’s well-lit meeting room. The whole thing was oddly soothing, if
fairly awkward — a big, foam black out mask with headphones embedded on either
side. Probably not the sort of thing you want to wear out in the open, though
Lucas happily modeled it above — because we clearly don’t have enough pictures
of our in-house VR guy wearing weird crap on his head over at TechCrunch.com.
I’d be lying
if I said I didn’t enjoy the minute or two I spent with the mask on, wondering
if this is how pet parrots feel when you cover their cages with a blanket for
the night. Maybe that’s just the jetlag talking.
It’s a
momentary respite from the cloying terrors of the world, a way to briefly trick
our overactive brains into thinking, yeah, sure, everything is just fine with
some new agey music, breathing exercises and, most importantly, just complete,
utter darkness.
I’m a sucker
for this stuff. If have the Calm app on my phone and started getting pretty
into the Muse headset before leaving for my two-week trip. I’ve shared the fact
that I’m a bad and anxious meditator plenty of times before on these pages, but
find even my failed attempts to be useful.
Someone
described the PowerMask as a kind of small scale take on a sensory deprivation
tank, and sure, why not? I’ve had worse nights.
A bit of a
wrinkle in all of this: it isn’t a sleep device, exactly. Or at least the
company isn’t branding it as such, Initially pitched as a “Power Nap” product,
there does appear to be some in-house confusion with regard to how exactly to
position the product. Certainly the startup wants to distinguish itself from
the eight million connected sleep masks I see at tech events, particularly when
traveling in Asia.
The company
surprisingly doesn’t discuss current zeitgeisty startup phrases like meditation
or mindfulness, either.
“We are on a
much bigger mission to train the world in the art of relaxation,” cofounder
Bradley Young writes in a followup email. The company’s site is far less
subtle, with language rarely heard outside of supplement ads. “Reach peak
state,” it writes in bold all caps font, “become a peak human.” I mean, sure,
why not?
That last
bit of hyperbole is courtesy of the company’s focus on something called CVT
(Cardiac Vagal Tone). Silentmode claims the device can be used to help us
normal folk achieve the resting heart rate of an athlete. Look, here’s a graph:
I won’t go
too deep into that stuff here, because frankly, I don’t know what I’m talking
about. Though I can see how buying some blackout curtains for your head b/w
“psychoacoustic and therapeutic sonic experiences” could go a ways toward
helping one chill the eff out. It did bring a momentary and much needed respite
from my vaguely horrific lodging experiences.
Despite the
company’s move away from sleep talk, it also went a ways toward helping me
crash on this flight. The music is soothing, and while the padded headset isn’t
a pillow exactly, it’s a lot more comfortable than just leaning your head on
the seat in front of you. Assuming you can get over the awkwardness of wearing
a giant thing on your head. Of course, no one looks good sleeping on a plane,
weird head accessory or no.
At $199,
it’s not cheap. And the company plans to offer up premium audio through an
additional app subscription. Silentmode
is also working with some large companies to pilot these products in office
spaces, where relaxation is a rare commodity indeed.
A major
player in the race to transport Chinese people around is losing steam. Meituan
Dianping, the Tencent-backed all-encompassing platform for local services,
continues to put the brakes on bike...
Techcrunch
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