notes from underground

While there is still some hope that it will return, we are leaving (indeed, have already left) the age of the wristwatch. It’s a pity, really, and it has broader implications: no longer do we check our wrist to ascertain our own remote, mechanically determined personal time (a subtle movement, intensely familiar and understood to mean many things depending on context). These days, we check our cellphones, our blackberries, to see a digital readout linked in to a worldwide communication infrastructure through a device designed purely to link you to other people. The movement is more invasive–try looking at your wrist, and then for comparison drawing a cellphone our of your pocket or purse, and you’ll see that I’m right– and the social nature of the device is more dramatically limiting: you can’t turn off your network without turning off time itself.

Overly dramatic, but there you have it.