💾 Archived View for hyperborea.org › log › 2021-03-14-clocks.gmi captured on 2022-04-28 at 17:27:46. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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Walking around the house last night, setting all the clocks to Daylight Saving Time before bed, I found myself thinking: Why do we have so many clocks, anyway? They used to share one clock for a whole town!
OK, that's not feasible these days, but every time we switch into and out of DST I miss some clocks because we have so many in the apartment, even though there are only three people.
How I fix the timestamp on photos when I forget to switch the camera's time.
And that's not counting the devices that automatically pull from a canonical time source over the internet. Every phone, computer, tablet or ebook reader tracks time, but at least they adjust themselves automatically!
Some of these we placed intentionally, like the wall clocks. Some need to track current time internally to function properly or to keep track of when things happened, like the phones and cameras. But some are just kind of extras.
The microwave *doesn't need a clock.* It needs a countdown timer, yes, but the clock is just kind of there as something for the display to show when you're not using it. I guess since they're already building the timer circuitry into it, tracking current time doesn't add much complexity. Same with the oven timer (countdown again) and the stereo (track/album length). Anything that has a display that might show hours/minutes/seconds for some purpose seems to get a clock as its default display. Whether you need it there or not.
Anyway, the upshot is, we have a ridiculous number of clocks for the number of rooms and people here. We always have *the* time, even though we never seem to have *time*.
Now I want to write a story about how time goes faster as you get older because you keep adding more clocks, and they use it up.
—Kelson Vibber, 2021-03-14
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‎Cross-posted at K-Squared Ramblings