What Time Is It?
I think that using technology in humorous ways is a noble task, especially when it has the effect of humanizing things. At least thats the way that a posting over at BoingBoing struck me -- its about a "watch that displays cheeky 'approximate time' messages".
I was a teen back when LED-based digital watches first became affordable and thus, widely available. I always had to chuckle whenever anyone with one of these watches was asked the time; they would quite earnestly respond "10:42" or "3:28" not "quarter to eleven" or "three thirty" -- no siree, they knew exactly what time it was, because that's what their watch displayed.
Of course the matter of the exact time depended on what source they used to set their watch by and the not insignificant matter of how well the watch actually kept time. Of course you can now buy a watch that synchornizes itself with Naval Observatory time, but I still like to keep 'human' time -- "half past eight" instead of "8:29" for me.
And for what it's worth, my timepiece of choice is an analog watch with a manual movement (no batteries).
I was a teen back when LED-based digital watches first became affordable and thus, widely available. I always had to chuckle whenever anyone with one of these watches was asked the time; they would quite earnestly respond "10:42" or "3:28" not "quarter to eleven" or "three thirty" -- no siree, they knew exactly what time it was, because that's what their watch displayed.
Of course the matter of the exact time depended on what source they used to set their watch by and the not insignificant matter of how well the watch actually kept time. Of course you can now buy a watch that synchornizes itself with Naval Observatory time, but I still like to keep 'human' time -- "half past eight" instead of "8:29" for me.
And for what it's worth, my timepiece of choice is an analog watch with a manual movement (no batteries).
posted by rich at 3:32 PM
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