Friday, January 21, 2011

The Clock is Fake

Just thinking.

I've been checking the time on my phone all day, thinking, "Oh, I'm making good time." But what exactly is good time? It seems to mean that our experience of passing of moments has outrun the clock's measurements. But didn't we invent the clock? Why are we measuring our own perceptions against something we created? Does our technology belong to us, or do we belong to it?

See, look:



Did you feel any anxiety at all? Did you think of what you have yet to do, or wonder if you've done enough already? Or if you're wasting time reading this now? It's just a bunch of pixels, the winding of electrons, an illusion. You're very real.

Why are there 360 seconds in a minute anyhow, twelve hours in the complete sweep of the big hand? Conquering Greeks helped themselves to the Babylonian zodiac. A happenstance, just the outcome of a bunch of individual actions. There's nothing inevitable about our system for measuring time.

So maybe it's time to let the clock know who's boss.

Just thinking.

1 comment:

  1. Grasshopper....thats so "20th" century...think now of "nano seconds"......you are on a right track....."getting payed by the hour, getting older by the minute"

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