My watch is playing up. It tends to freeze its screen. Any amount of pressing of buttons doesn’t have the desired effect. This is the third Garmin watch that has graced my arm. This one is full of smart features. Not, that I need a fraction of what it can do. Up until now it’s been faithful. So, I’m annoyed that it’s behaving badly.
These trails and tribulations led me to going back to a conventional watch. Dial and hands. A slightly more up-market Swiss watch that has been worn more on special occasions than the everyday Garmin. I like it. Only it’s metal, chunky and weighty. More of a real proper watch than the plastics of the Garmin. More residual value too.
This moment of reflection is about the demise of the traditional wristwatch. They haven’t gone out of fashion entirely. In fact, there’s more fashion watches displayed in shop windows than ever. But I wonder who buys them? I’m reliably led to believe that young people use their phone to tell the time. That simple but essential act. Since the mobile phone is almost inseparable from the human hand it’s pushed other devices into the wilderness. It does it all.
Maybe a couple of decades ago, I’d feel awkward if I’d forgotten to put my watch on in the morning. It would sit there expectantly. Its role was essential. Although timepieces were ubiquitous, around the house, car, and work, the only one that was personal was my own watch.
There wasn’t the necessity for a device to be “smart” either. A watch was a watch. A camera was a camera. A phone was a phone. A Walkman was a Walkman. The list goes on. Making this point makes me feel like a primitive relic from a long-forgotten past.
In the land that time forgot. No, not me. Time has always been important. If it’s not planning or scheduling, I’ve a fair amount of project management activity in my past. Deadlines, milestones, and critical paths coloured up on Gantt Charts[1]. Yes, time and tide wait for no man. A nice little idiom.
Time can be personal. At one time my mother had the kitchen wall clock set about 5-minutre in advance. The underlying idea being that if you were a moment or two late in starting or finishing a job then you were not late in reality. Even better when the deception instilled a bit of urgency into a task when in-fact there was time enough.
Going back further, I remember a childhood conversation with an ancient distant relative who lived in the shadow of a towering railway viaduct. Time then, in the small hamlet where he lived, was linked to the time of the steam trains on the Somerset and Dorset line. No need for clocks. Farm routines, like bringing the cows in for milking were arranged according to passing trains.
I expect I’ll get my Garmin watch, with its accurate navigation functions, up and running again. It may need a new battery. I do wonder if I need the precision or the range of its capabilities. Like the technology packed in my phone, its use is more habit than necessity, in a lot of cases. We are beguiled by “can do” technology.
[1] The first Gantt chart was devised in mid 1890s by Karol Adamiecki, an engineer who ran a steelworks in southern Poland.
John Vincent 