I bought a watch: yes, an analog wristwatch. It's a modest Casio model that I don't even know the name of—no, not one of the calculator watches. I almost did buy that model, but at the last moment I up-sold myself and went for a still reasonably-priced model that looks a little more tasteful. More importantly, however: it only serves to tell me the time.
For some time now, I have found myself increasingly mystified, nay, shocked, by the frenzied character of horizontally-integrating personal computing devices. iPhones do everything now, and yet, there seems to be a constant proliferation of other senseless knick-knacks and gadgets that somehow fill some gap that, at least temporarily, one's smartphone cannot.
This blog is part of a not-so-concerted effort, casually directed toward getting myself out from under the oppressive thumb of corporate technological dominance. I have observed what sheer numbers of people can no longer tell the time without taking a phone from their pocket and flicking on a LED screen. I have been, for some years now, among that crowd. Furthermore, I have observed in my own self, the perverse tendency to check the time, almost as a compulsion, as a kind of defensive measure, on my phone. It permits me to bind together, almost inextricably, the useful data of chronometry, with the pathetic and toxicomaniacal behavior of trying to will some fresh notifications into existence, merely by checking for them. I need not go into detail about the fresh dependencies and anxieties this creates.
Anyway, back to the watch. I think of this new/old device as a simple, concrete change that, in one sense, brings a bit of the Unix philosophy to my life. Specifically, the first principle, as articulated by Doug McIlroy: make each "program" do one thing well. I think it's not a coincidence that, in English, we have the phrase "like clockwork." Clocks are the essence of elegant, functional, no-nonsense doing-one-thing-ness.
I am not a person who thrives on excess. I like quiet, distraction-free environments. I don't go around constantly plugged into social media—at least I try not to do so. Yet, this is increasingly the mode(s) of existence into which we are shuttled and goaded, like livestock, on the promise, long ago voided, that the unlimited potential of technology will continue to unlock new frontiers for us as humans, as long as we permit its untrammeled progress. But how can we measure progress without time?