I miss clocks

Amongst other little things.

Yah, it’s an AI pastiche. What do you expect from a knuckle-dragger? Fine art?

Used to be, any public space you were in, if you looked at the walls above eye-level sooner or later you’d see a clock. The loss of these is yet another consequence of everyone voluntarily cramming an electronic leash/Orwellian nightmare into their pockets.

Your brain is about three pounds of what is essentially bacon, jammed inside bone armour, and running on about 20 watts¹ of electricity.

It evolved during a period where “putting out the cat” involved a club and testicular fortitude², where we existed in kin-groups of fifty³ people or less, the 4 F⁴s were an incredibly important driver of behaviour, and “Was it this berry that killed Bob, or that one?” was the height of applied critical thinking.

The last twenty years we’ve taken that three pounds of goo, and instead of a nice, limited group of people we expose it to several thousand random bugsnipes — all with Opinions; instead of talking to other people when we get around to it, we must instantly, immediately, and constantly maintain contact with the entire bloody world.

Constant dopamine hits, constant stimulation, constant social interaction using a blob of fat designed to work on problems along the lines of: “This mushroom makes you SEE God; and this mushroom makes you MEET God. I think.”

Used to be, I needed to know the time, I used my Mark 1, Mod 0 Berry Sensing Units, Ocular, found a clock, and voila! The time. That was it — just the time.

Now? I haul that sodding electronic leash out of my pocket, hit the button on the side, look at the ti … oh, look! I’ve got three text messages. And a Facebook Message. And the Signal app. Oh, the company Slack was busy, better check … whoops, got two new emails. and Google runs the stories it thinks I should be interested in, YouTube wants my attention, and … and … and …

I don’t think this is healthy. Not for me, and not for young, plastic minds who didn’t have the unconnected childhood that I had.

Take these damn smartphones, and the iConstant iInternet™, and the pernicious “social media”, and give me my wall clocks, and actual newspapers, and libraries, and long periods of Unconnected Peace.

Grump.

Ian

1. For comparison, 20 watts makes for a rather dim light bulb.

2. Have you googled ‘smilodon’?

3. Up to 150 if Robin Dunbar is correct.

4. Feeding, Fighting, Fleeing, and Fervent Snuggling.