I have a constant internal battle about my Apple Watch. On the one hand (no pun intended), it’s incredibly helpful to be able to look at my wrist and see the date, the time, the weather, and progress on my personal fitness goals for the day. On the other hand, I don’t always need notifications about the latest article on Apple News or any one of the other dozen or so distractions that pop up frequently. Sometimes, I think about going back to my old, faithful Fossil watch.
Sometimes I look at it with its simple analog face. Three sticks and a small number show me the date with some presumption that I know what month and year it is. Have you ever thought about how much the evolution of our timepieces is a reflection of the time in which we live?
Sundials measured time-based on an imprecise unit – more of a portion of the day rather than a specific hour. To function accurately, sundials needed to be aligned properly with the Earth’s axis and positioned correctly with the sun. They also needed to account for the local latitude and longitude. Additionally, sundials were affected by the changing seasons and variations in the sun’s position throughout the year. When people relied on sundials, news, and information also took days or weeks to reach the intended audiences.
By the 1700s, a version of the analog clock was in use, but most did not have a second hand. That came along in the late 1800s, about the same time that train travel became popular – and it became important for the trains to run on time. Information and people began to move by the minute with telegraphs and telephones.
As counting the seconds became more necessary for things like athletic competitions, we upgraded to digital. The first digital watches were created by the Hamilton Watch Company and the Casio Company in the 1970s. That’s about the same time that the first personal computer was invented and shipped to the home. It was a time of screens and digital content.
Today, the world moves at speeds less than a second, and, as it happens, our Smart Watches can report time in fractions of a second. When we talk about the flow of information we talk about it in terms of megabytes and gigabytes per second, and we expect answers to our questions just as rapidly.
Before we get ahead of ourselves and move any faster than we already are, maybe it’s worth our time to think about the world we are creating. It’s wonderful to experience more access to knowledge and information than any humans in the history of the world, but it can also be a bit overwhelming. In the rush of our daily lives, maybe it’s time to just take a moment, dial it back, and breathe.