SAVING TIME
Steinfels, Peter
SAVING TIME PETER STEINFELS According to Art Buchwald, the problem with America is that the Hope Diamond is in the Smithsonian. I have a better theory. The problem with America is the digital...
...The heart of the matter is that the digital watch is an inferior concept...
...Of course I can think in numbers if I want to-I can say to myself, it is now eleven-fifty-one, it is now eleven-fifty-two...
...and p.m...
...Or, What's Going to Happen to the Small Jewelry Store...
...First came the technology, a miniaturized electronics developed for computers and calculators and various other useful items...
...For that you must deal with some aerospace company in Texas...
...I'm sure it could...
...some straight man out there is supposed to ask...
...If only I could see the time of day written out in numbers...
...Where the numbers on a digital watch record only a given instant, the pie-shapes marked out by the hands of a pre-digital visibly represent amounts of time- duration...
...That would still not get to the heart of the matter...
...Which brings us to another problem...
...The digital watch reduces the information conveyed...
...Let us call it the Social and Economic Consequences of the Digital Watch...
...As for reliability, retailers complain that as many as a third of the digitals turn out to be defective...
...If our ancestors had been using digital clocks, then we would hail the hands and numerals system as a sophisticated, superior innovation...
...Once you get the hang of the thing, which most seven-year-olds seem capable of doing, you have more than a set of numbers, you have a diagram-what in grade school we called a "pie graph...
...I can observe those shapes diminish as I write, and I know exactly how much time is passing without thinking in numbers at all...
...To be sure, there were always a few unfortunates who, under the ancien regime of two hands and twelve numerals, were never able to learn to tell time...
...The shop on Broadway where I recently had my 1963 pre-digital repaired- for the second time in thirteen years -offers many services...
...How happy we would all be then...
...Most digitals are easily read in pitch blackness but impossible in bright daylight-a trade-off much to the benefit of insomniacs and coal miners whose lights go out...
...The digital watch is the perfect example of a product creating a need...
...One thing they can't do is fix a digital watch...
...The old-fashioned, pre-digital watch face not only told you the time but displayed this information graphically...
...Maybe time is on our side...
...Many require two hands to find out the time, a disadvantage which did not even characterize the sun dial...
...Yes, absolutely yes...
...Original sin being what it is, eventually it occurred to someone that this technology could be applied to watches and a sizable portion of the population persuaded that the result was new, scientific, and altogether better...
...It is a step backwards, simpler and more straightforward than the hands and numerals system in precisely the way that picture writing and hieroglyphics are simpler and more straightforward than the phonetic alphabet...
...The addition of a calendar has already been a service to types like myself who never remember the date and take until March to remember that the year has changed...
...the sliver carved out by the little hand and the twelve tells me it is almost midnight...
...Perhaps someone truly imaginative could rethink the watch entirely-starting with human needs and not simply an available technology...
...It gives me, in effect, a choice, to note a specific instant by number or to represent a duration by space...
...There are no hands slightly past or slightly before the minute marks...
...Its proprietors, for example, can explain matters chronometric to their customers in Yiddish, German, French, and Spanish...
...If you can see the universe in a grain of sand, you ought to be able to see our whole civilization in a digital watch...
...Its graph function might be reinforced by a bar of color which could be moved around to establish whatever imaginary line you are interested in...
...The other day an acquaintance with her arms full of packages asked me if I could push the button on her watch so she could read the time from her brand-new, expensive anniversary present...
...The digital watch...
...And we would be right...
...The problem with America is the digital watch...
...And this, too, is typical of our civilization: we sacrifice knowledge for precision...
...In return, it offers, at most, the elimination of ambiguity...
...Many models are bulky...
...Could the pre-digital watch be improved...
...But how many of the rest of us were walking around a few years ago mumbling, "Oh, if only life were not so complicated...
...The product, in fact, is distinctly inferior...
...In time the manufacturers may remedy these defects...
...Did we need digital watches...
...Her alternative was to set all the packages down on the sidewalk...
...you are told definitively, the time is now 12: 07: 35...
...That is the first question...
...Meanwhile the papers report customer dissatisfaction with digitals...
...Nowadays, however, invention is the mother of necessity...
...If I wanted to watch a television program at 12:15, I would naturally imagine a line extending from the center to the three, and form a different set of "pies" in my mind's eye...
...There might be some differentiation on the dial between a.m...
...My pre-digital watch gives me that information, too...
...The quarter circle carved out by the big hand of my watch and an imaginary line from the center of the face to the numeral twelve tells me immediately that fifteen minutes remain in this hour...
Vol. 103 • October 1976 • No. 21
